Politics expected to influence decision

IT is freely acknowledged that the UEFA decision today on the venue for the European Championship finals of 2008 will be hugely influenced by political considerations.

When the 14 members of UEFA’s executive committee identify those potential hosts deemed capable of successfully staging the championships, they will be influenced by historical liaisons when they move to reach a decision by a straightforward voting procedure.

This is why delegates to the UEFA congress in Geneva will freely admit - in private - that the final decision is not solely dependant upon quality of facilities or infrastructure.

All things being equal, the delegates will side with those countries they traditionally regard as allies.

The joint Scottish/Irish bid sought to react to this reality by using the good offices of Des Casey who has just retired from football. Casey, from Dundalk, filled all of the executive positions with FAI in the course of a long and distinguished career.

He has just finished a successful period as a top executive with UEFA as well. He was a vice president until he stepped down this year.

Casey has taken a prominent role behind the scenes while officers of the Scottish and Irish football associations, as well as government representatives of both countries, worked to fulfil the UEFA criteria for staging the championships.

The Scots meet their task of providing six stadiums of at least 30,000 capacity brilliantly - Hampden Park, Ibrox, Murrayfield and Celtic Park are all in that category already. Three more up to standard are being developed at Hibernian’s Easter Road venue, an Aberdeen stadium and another in Dundee.

Scotland would have a better chance of succeeding as a lone bidder but the government was not prepared to underwrite the finance needed for Scotland to provide eight stadiums.

So they turned to Ireland and here in Geneva we learned that the Government have guaranteed a second stadium to bolster a re-vamped Lansdowne Road as Ireland’s contribution. The second stadium is a planned new structure - Croke Park is not currently envisaged as a venue.

This government guarantee is all that UEFA requires so the Scottish/Irish delegates were completely positive after yesterday’s activities when the seven applicants made presentations - each lasting 15 minutes - to the UEFA officers at their headquarters in Nyon.

The members of UEFA’s national teams committee - who will run the tournament - will offer the 14-man executive its recommendations in order of merit on issues such as government support, as well as social, economical and technical considerations.

A substantial boost to the Scottish/Irish bid is the powerful footballing tradition in both countries, the ongoing support for domestic football, particularly in the case of Scotland, the records of both at international level and, especially, the remarkably good reputation of both sets of supporters.

So the balance will finally swing on the political issues and here an element of luck will influence matters because not all 14 members of the executive can vote because some officers are associated with the actual bids.

The seven applicants are: Scotland/Ireland; Switzerland/Austria; Greece/Turkey; Hungary; Russia; Bosnia/Croatia and the four Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

They will view the order in which the seven are rated by the national teams committee and only eight of the 14 will vote in the first round.

Officers from Turkey, Russia, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and the president, Lennart Johannsen from Sweden cannot vote because of their allegiance to the applicants.

The Iceland delegate will not vote because his national association has publicly announced its support of the Nordic bid.

The list of applicants will be reduced to two or three depending on the result of this vote and if, for argument sake, Russia is eliminated in round one then the Russian member of the executive can then vote in the next round.

So it is impossible to predict the trend but the Scottish/Irish delegates are hoping that the contest will immediately be reduced to a straight battle between themselves and the other favourites Switzerland/Austria.

They believe they will have the support of the Nordic countries and those votes could give them the majority they will need if they are to win the nomination.