Euro 2020 to be held across Europe
442 Staff - Thursday 06 December 2012, 16:30
Football's European Championship in 2020 will take place in cities across
the continent, rather than in one or two host countries, in a radical
departure from the traditional format, UEFA said on Thursday.
European football's governing body said the move, approved by its executive
committee, would allow smaller countries a slice of the action as they
would not be able to stage an unwieldy, 24-team tournament on their own.
UEFA
said it planned to use a mix of major cities and medium and smaller
ones for the tournament which will mark the competition's 60th
anniversary.
"The main point
is really to give more cities, more countries the possibility to host a
celebration European Championship," UEFA Secretary General Gianni
Infantino told reporters.
"Instead of a party in one country, you will have a party all over Europe."
The
idea was first aired by UEFA President Michel Platini at the end of
Euro 2012. Three of the last four European Championships have been
staged in two countries although the tournament was traditionally held
in one.
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The announcement
threw up a range of questions such as how many cities would host games,
whether all host countries would qualify and play at home, and how much
travelling would be done.
Infantino said that decisions would be made over next few months.
"Today, everything is open," he said.
He said the bidding process would start by March with a final decision on the host cities by spring 2014.
Infantino said that financial considerations played a major part in the decision.
"The
fact that the Euro moves to 24 teams bears additional burdens on the
host nations, the requirements are becoming bigger and bigger," he said
LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES
"One
of the purposes of this decision is to help countries who are maybe not
sure today whether they should build or not a national stadium, to give
them this impetus.
"It will
be a lot easier from a financial perspective for all the countries. If
you need to build airports or 10 stadiums in a country - this would be
rather easy because it would be one stadium per host city."
Infantino
said the many new logistical challenges would be addressed in the next
few months, including the number of host cities.
"The only thing decided is that the concept is changing," he said. "How many cities is to be decided and determined."
Other
issues to be addressed include whether to play groups in one or two
venues close to each other, or whether to force teams to play their
group games in different parts of the continent.
"If
groups are going to be in different countries, then ideally they should
not be too far away," he said. "We have to look into that and take a
decision which makes sense.
He also accepted that with so many host countries, some of them would not qualify.
"You can't have 15 hosts automatically qualified. This would have to be thought about and looked at," he said.
"Another
question is will hosts who qualified play at home... It will probably
be difficult to understand for the fans of a country which is host if
they do not play a match at home.
"Probably,
you have a certain number of teams at home against a certain number of
teams who play away, this may be an issue. But there's also the question
of if it's actually an advantage to play at home."
Infantino
said the change was a one-off decision to celebrate the 60th
anniversary. "It is a decision only about 2020, it is not going forward
forever."
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