The FA is confident of winning this month’s vote to host the semi-finals and final of Euro 2020 after Germany confirmed its intention to withdraw its bid to focus on the next tournament.
With Uefa planning to stage Euro 2020 in 13 cities across the continent to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the tournament, Germany — or, more specifically, Munich — had emerged as the only threat to the FA’s hopes of staging the matches at Wembley. However, the DFB [German FA] indicated yesterday that it is likely to withdraw that bid, before the Uefa executive committee vote on September 19, in return for English support of its bid to host 2024 in its entirety.
Helmut Sandrock, the DFB general secretary, told Bild: “We have spoken with them [the FA] about it, that they could hold off on Euro 2024 and support our application. In turn, we would forgo the Euro 2020 games and support England’s [proposed] bid for Euro 2028. Giving up our application for 2020 is only on the table if we can be sure to get the tournament in 2024.”
Neither the FA nor Uefa, European football’s governing body, would comment last night. Both organisations maintain that there will be no “deals” of the type that the DFB implies. However, the FA’s relationships with the DFB and with the Uefa hierarchy — in contrast to its relationship with Fifa, which is extremely strained — and its private discussions on Euro 2020 have left it convinced that the Munich bid will be dropped just before the vote.
The Uefa executive committee will decide which 12 cities will win secondary packages, which would involve staging matches in the group phase and early knockout stage. In addition to London and Munich, the cities to have submitted bids for secondary packages are Amsterdam, Baku, Bilbao, Brussels, Bucharest, Budapest, Cardiff, Copenhagen, Dublin, Glasgow, Jerusalem, Minsk, Rome, St Petersburg, Skopje, Sofia and Stockholm. It is expected that two out of Cardiff, Dublin and Glasgow will be successful.