More than a decade after their bid with Scotland to host Euro 2008 went down in flames, the FAI are back in Geneva on Friday rather more hopeful of having something to celebrate when the white smoke starts to emerge from the Uefa’s Executive Committee meeting and the 13 host cities for the 2020 event are announced.
The association, which is hoping to hoping to be awarded a package of three group games and a second round match, will have had its confidence bolstered by the technical reports released last week, but they’ll know better than most that the history of these things is littered with good bids that failed for all sorts of reasons, many of them bad, and there will be some anxiety amongst the Irish representatives until they are sure of success.
A total of 19 associations have made bids with two (London and Munich) going head to head for the semi-finals and final. The loser there will become one of 18 chasing 12 “standard packages” four of which come with quarter-finals, the rest with round of 16 games.
Dublin is only in contention for the latter as the Aviva stadium, or Dublin Arena as it will be known again for the purposes of the process, is not large enough to host one of the tournament’s last seven games. Of those chasing those eight basic packages, though, the Irish capital looks to be one of the safest bets with the Uefa’s assessment generally positive on almost every aspect of the bid.
The report is upbeat about the stadium, governance and mobility, all headings under which each bid will be specifically marked in the briefings provided to the 17 ExCo members today. Rivals might wonder about the way it glosses over our relative remoteness and the slight generosity of its assessment of the transport links between airport and city centre but few of the bids are without these issues in these areas and several are rather more daunting.
Almost exceptionally in Dublin’s case, a particular note is made of the fact of the enthusiasm of other, unnamed, stakeholders – Dublin City Council is most likely the prime example – for the project. That might be taken for a given but it should not be; an otherwise strong bid from Stockholm for instance, can only have been damaged by the specific inclusion of a statement to the effect that absolutely no public funding of the project is in anyway envisaged.
The Swedes, you’d imagine, should still be okay regardless for on transport, hotels and the stadium itself, they are already streets ahead of many of their rivals. So it is not as if a whole pile of government cash was ever going to be required and anyway, a change of government there in recent days might just enable supporters to hint at a loosening of the purse strings in the unlikely event that things are looking tricky.
Some of the other bids, though, looked to be fundamentally extremely flawed. Israel’s bid team, for instance, who are championing the use of a refurbished stadium in Jerusalem, appears not to have included the number of hotels beds that will be available, have been short on detail relating to the venue and weak in relation to transport from the airport, which is more than 50 kilometres away.
Several of the report summaries include World Bank assessments of the political or economic situation in the particular country but the authors of Israel’s actually acknowledge themselves that the situation in their country is “complex” and it’s hard to imagine there wasn’t an element of ironic humour intended in relation to the Uefa assessment noting that the proposed perimeter security fence around the stadium would not meet the minimum required.
More damaging from Uefa’s point of view is the suggestion that there is a “high risk” of failing to meet the organisation’s commitments to the tournament’s commercial sponsors around the venue. That’s unlikely to be a chance the blazers will want to take.
Minsk and Skopje don’t sound like they have a lot going for them either. The people at the FAI might sometimes be taken to be blowing their own trumpets when they talk about the professionalism of their bid documents but the Belarusians are criticised for providing “minimal information” in relation to their bid while the Macedonian stadium falls far short of the minimum standards, its hotels are nowhere near what is required (particularly in relation to Uefa’s all important “key target groups”) and there is “uncertainty” over some commercial aspects of the document.
Sofia’s, meanwhile, seems solid enough. Sure, it has some flaws but they all look surmountable by comparison with some of their rivals. Still, the fact that the local authorities failed to waive the 25 per cent surcharge on airport charges for flights on weekends, public holidays and late at night just suggests a lack of the sort of love to which many in Uefa generally feel they are entitled.
Bulgaria, though, like Israel, whose Avraham Luzon is a member of the Stadium and Security Committee, has somebody at the ExCo meeting where the decision will be taken and while they are not actually allowed to vote on their own bids it’s hard, very hard, not to imagine that that might make some sort of difference.
You could pick holes in Bilbao’s bid on a number of fronts but Uefa vice president Angel Maria Villar Llona is a pretty big hitter and let’s just say you wouldn’t bet against his country getting a share of the pie because some punters might have to take trains from Bordeaux or Madrid to get to their games.
More interesting, might be the debate between the Russian and Ukrainian ExCo members on the St Petersburg bid which is technically excellent by all accounts but, well, a tad politically sensitive. There have already been calls for Russia to lose the 2018 World Cup and Michel Platini has taken some stick for voting for them to get it in the first place. So does Uefa want to dig itself in further and then perhaps have to deal with the fallout from a severe escalation in the country's political isolation?
Platini, meanwhile, declares himself “a romantic” and seems, prepare yourself for a shock, to be rather in love with the idea of his own legacy. This whole shebang is his baby and he has been at pains to emphasise the opportunity it presents to send a bit of the tournament to countries who could never dream of hosting it all.
That might just, for all we know, spur him on to present a bit to one of the most unlikely venues but Dublin clearly qualifies as somewhere that fits the general bill, as one of the Irish bid team observes: “You have to ask why they wouldn’t give a bit of it to us”.
The truth is, there really doesn’t seem to be any very good reason and that, ultimately, should prove good enough.
QUESTION & ANSWERS
So Ireland is in contention to host the European Championships in 2020?
Well, a small part of it. The idea is that 13 countries will get a share of the event and the hope is that Dublin will get three group games plus one from the first knock-out stage.
Why?
Uefa’s president, Michel Platini, says that he has a sort of dream, that to mark the occasion of the tournament’s 60th birthday lots of countries who couldn’t normally hope to host games in a major championship will get to do so. The FAI have jumped on the anniversary bandwagon, telling Uefa that they’re a perfect fit as 2020 is their 100th birthday and so it can be a double celebration in Dublin. Actually, it’s their 99th but, hey, who is counting?
That’s wonderful. Who says Uefa doesn’t care about the little guys?
Well, the whole thing is actually a bit of Plan B, maybe even C. Originally, there were lots of countries interested in hosting the whole tournament or parts of it with neighbours but when Uefa president Michel Platini expressed a preference for Turkey the rest decided they were wasting their time and withdrew. Then Turkey made it clear their preference was to bid for Olympic Games even when they were told by Platini that it was one or the other. By the time he went back looking for alternatives, there were none to be found.
Why the lack of interest?
In part because with the tournament having expanded to 24 countries, you need more stadiums and infrastructure so the cost of hosting it has grown considerably and with Europe in the doldrums financially, few politicians were up for the idea.
So this is what future tournaments will look like?
No, it’s a one off. Some of the bigger nations are regaining their appetite for staging the whole thing and there’s a lot of talk of a behind the scenes carve up between England and Germany with the English getting the 2020 final and the 2028 tournament while the Germans host 2024.
So this is our big chance?
Yup, and the FAI along with various wings of government and the transport companies have put together what Uefa seem to regard as a pretty strong bid. The chances of success seem high but it’s a nasty business and there are no guarantees – just ask the English about 2018.
And if we do win, we get to qualify automatically?
Er, afraid not. The plan, though, is that in the event they do qualify, Uefa will give host countries some of their games at home, ideally two from their group and possibly the knock-out stage, although there will clearly be some hurdles to be overcome in terms of seedings and who all of the qualifiers are.
Candidate cities
Finals or standard package: London and Munich. Standard package: Baku, Minsk, Brussels, Sofia, Copenhagen, Skopje, Budapest, Jerusalem, Rome, Amsterdam, Dublin, Bucharest, St Petersburg, Glasgow, Bilbao, Stockholm, Cardiff.
Process
The ExCo members will vote on whether London or Munich will get to host the semi-finals and final. They will then vote on which of the remaining stadiums with capacities of more than 60,000 (London/Munich plus Baku, Brussels, Budapest, Rome, St Petersburg and Cardiff) will get group games with quarter-finals. The 14 remaining nations will then be grouped by geographical region with one from each of, most likely, six, selected. Two of the remaining eight will then be chosen to complete the list.
