Scottish-Irish bid to host championship an early favourite

FIFA vice-president David Will claims Scotland and Ireland are neck-and-neck with Austria and Switzerland in the race to host the 2008 European Championships.

The two joint bids are among seven hopefuls aiming to stage the tournament, but Will, of Brechin, believes the Scottish-Irish bid is an early favourite.

“I would put Scotland and Ireland joint favourites with Austria and Switzerland. These two are the strongest bids,” Will said.

“The pendulum might swing our (Scotland and Ireland’s) way even more when it is realised that a Swiss-Austrian championship would follow so closely after the World Cup in neighbouring Germany just two years before,” he said.

“I also believe we have an advantage in that we have a majority of very-large-capacity stadia, which makes it attractive to UEFA.

“We will be providing six out of eight stadia with large capacities of 50,000 or more, which makes it attractive from a financial perspective.”

Other bids include one from four Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. Although Scandinavians have a strong political presence within UEFA, the administrative problems of staging a tournament across four countries makes them comparative outsiders.

Furthermore, UEFA communications director Mike Lee has confirmed that if the bid was successful, only two of the four host countries would be allowed automatic qualification.

“No bid can have more than two automatic qualifiers from host countries. That is enshrined in the schedules governing bid procedures,” Mr Lee said.

If UEFA chose the Nordic bid, it would mean accepting a possible scenario where European Championship matches would be played in one or two countries who had not qualified for the finals.

Scotland and Ireland’s main weakness is the fact that the 1996 tournament was staged in England. That might affect some thinking within UEFA, even though for football purposes, Scotland is viewed as completely independent from England.

The other bids, from Greece-Turkey, Bosnia-Croatia, and Russia and Hungary as single bids, would need to convince UEFA’s executive committee they could overcome serious problems with stadia and security.

This may prove crucial when the seven are reduced to a shortlist of two or three before a final vote is taken by the committee on December 13.

Of the 14 members of the executive committee, six come from countries involved with a bid and are ineligible to vote.

If their bids are not shortlisted, however, the members can then join in for the final votes.