After an anxious start to the day, there was an understandable sense of satisfaction among Dublin’s successful bid team as they returned home from the Euro 2020 venue selection process in Geneva last night. With Uefa generally keen to get going, preliminary work on organising the Irish end of the tournament is likely to have to start within a matter of months but the voting figures from yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting underlined how well the group has laid the groundwork.

Dublin’s bid was reportedly ranked the third best in technical terms behind the two candidates for the finals package, London and Berlin. And when it came to its moment in what was a typically convoluted voting procedure it appears to have been among the best supported too with Dublin a comfortable second in the final ballot of eight cities competing for six “standard packages” of three group games and one round of 16 match.

The city finished second to Amsterdam in that phase of the voting with 55 votes compared to 58. Bilbao was next with 50 followed by Budapest and Brussels, both of which were also pretty well supported.

Glasgow, meanwhile, secured the very last spot with 22 votes, just one ahead of rival Cardiff which had earlier come well down the list in the voting for one of the packages that included a quarter-final. Stockholm finished last and so, with the Welsh capital, was one of only two cities to actually come away empty handed from the voting as Skopje, Jerusalem, Minsk and Sofia all ended up being excluded from the process on the basis of their bids simply not being up to scratch.

Rumoured deal

With regard to the latter stages of the tournament, London was awarded the semi-finals by acclamation in the end as Munich withdrew – as it had been suggested might happen as part of a rumoured deal under the terms of which Germany and England will support each other’s candidatures to host the entirety of the 2024 and 2028 tournaments respectively.

The Germans, on this occasion, were happy to walk away with a quarter-final and three group games with Baku, Rome and, perhaps more surprisingly, St Petersburg, the other cities to get those packages.

Dublin’s Chamber of Commerce put the value of the successful bid at €50million last night which, at an average of around €250 per person attending the four games, is probably not too far wide of the mark although the final figure will depend to no small extent on whether the Irish team now actually qualifies for the tournament and so gets to benefit by getting to play two group and possibly one knockout game on home soil. The upshot of that, of course, would be fewer foreign visitors.

The expectation, in any case, is that the city will eventually be paired with Glasgow for the finals with one group of four teams and six games being split between the two locations. The idea would be to have both host teams in the group if they qualify whereas if they don't, FAI chief executive John Delaney suggested after the result had been announced, it's also possible that England might be placed in it.

For the FAI, securing the games is of no great financial benefit with Uefa paying a fee intended to cover the association’s costs, no more, and the government picking up the tab for the likes of the transport. The hospitality sector will be the big winners on that front.

Reputation enhanced

The association, however, will come away with its reputation significantly enhanced and has already done itself considerable good by getting this far. “What it does do,” said Delaney, “is it gives us a cachet that we wouldn’t have had in the past. And I’m sure with our ten -year ticket sales and season ticket sales, people will be more encouraged to come to the Aviva now, knowing that in 2020 we’re going to host such a prestigious tournament.

“So it’s an historic day. We’ve achieved a holy grail really that I think, in the past, people would have felt we couldn’t achieve.”

Although there is six years to go before a ball is kicked and no infrastructural work of any note to be done, Declan Conroy, who oversaw the bid process, anticipates that the preparations will still have to start within a matter of months.

"Doubtless Uefa will send though their first list of things very soon, there'll be things to be done this year, that's for sure," he said. "That's for another day, however. Right now, there's just great relief and a lot of satisfaction that we've been successful. It was a great effort by the likes of Dublin City Council, the Dublin Airport Authority and a whole load of people who never get any credit. It was pretty tense in that room this morning but it's a very good feeling now."