I don't know - Turkey's a big place with a great football culture that's never hosted a finals and that knows how to throw a few million about to get what it wants; wouldn't surprise me at all to see them win. The English - and this is an England bid ultimately - tend not to know how to play UEFA's game, hence their really poor showing at the 2018 bid for example
It's being reported that Turkey are turning attention to a EURO 2032 bid, maybe co-hosted with Italy: https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2023...-look-to-2032/
October 10th is the day of decision.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
No decision to be made now, they might as well just go ahead and announce it.
Pretty much confirmed: https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2023...ro-2028-hosts/
Read somewhere that UEFA want the five nations to go through the usual qualification, but are looking at putting protections in place to reduce the likelihood of a lot of the five missing out.
England will be there regardless barring a failure of epic proportions. Scotland are very decent right now and should be there, but you wouldn’t say it’s definitive, we should on current projectory have a very decent bunch of players but if we have a poor manager we may still be mediocre and battling to qualify, Wales will be competitive and I guess the North will face a big fight to qualify because they don’t seem to have a good talent pool coming through to replenish the lads that made them competitive for a few years.
Of course the current cluster**** performances are likely to put us as a low fourth seed in draws pretty soon so unless we have a good nations league and wc26 campaign, we’ll likely be massively up against it in groups from the get go.
My feeling is that they’ll reserve one or two places for non-qualified host teams to playoff against each other. Let’s say Wales and the North didn’t qualify maybe a home and away game between them. If we didn’t as well, they might grab the next team through nations league performance (for arguments sake Bosnia) and do Ireland Bosnia for one place and Wales vs the North for the other place. That would probably be the fairest.
Confirmation of joint Ireland/UK tournament will come today at 11
https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/livestreaming/
Officially confirmed as joint hosts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67062742
Also from the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/67062519
"The FA wants England to reach Euro 2028 via the formal qualifying process, rather than be handed an automatic slot by Uefa, the BBC understands. This is because they think it would provide the team with better preparation for the tournament than a series of friendlies.
With five nations in the UK and Ireland bid - which will today be confirmed as unopposed hosts of the tournament at a Uefa ExCo meeting in Nyon, it is expected that Uefa will offer two ‘back-up’ berths for any host teams that fail to qualify on merit.
If more than two teams fail to qualify, it would mean the two teams with the best records would be handed those slots. It is therefore possible that as many as three teams from the UK and Ireland may not play in their own tournament if none reached the finals through qualifying."
That sounds blatantly unfair on countries other than the UK and Ireland.
The host selection for these tournaments is getting farcical tbh.
Realistically, what do Scotland/Wales/Ireland/the North add to the bid? And you've got that stupid qualification caveat as a result.
The 2030 World Cup was last week awarded to Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay/Spain/Portugal/Morocco - all six qualify by rights. FIFA even considered environmental and sustainability issues before creating a tournament where teams would be flying half way around the world between matches
Utter nonsense
Also announced is that Italy and Turkey will co-host Euro 2032.
Can you explain what's unfair about it? Euro 2008 and Euro 2012 had multiple hosts and 2/16 qualifying spots filled up. There's still 22 qualifying slots available for everyone either way.Originally Posted by osarusan
Could see a weird scenario where 2 hosts qualify and 2 get playoff spots though. The playoff games would essentially mean nothing to the host teams, as they'd be guaranteed a spot as a fallback with the 5th team cheering them both on.
It means two teams who didn't emerge from qualifying will get priority over teams who did qualify, but really these "hosts" are going to host what - half a group and maybe a knockout game? They can't host a full group as one venue (which is all everyone bar England is providing) can't host simultaneous group matches in the final round
And the North have nominated Casement Park and I don't know if it's yet clear if that'll get to host a game when the time comes
It almost certainly won't be ready. There's too much opposition.
It wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to start building a new stadium at NUI Galway and be prepared to step in when Belfast inevitably falls through. Worst case scenario is that there's a miracle in Andytown, but it would still be an excellent resource for the university and a new home for Connacht Rugby and Galway United.
Bring Back Belfast Celtic F.C.
I'm totally underwhelmed by this. We bid for a tournament and the GAA gets a new stadium. The reported gains to the FAI wouldn't fund a RTE barter account's expenditure on rugby tickets.
In those tournaments, the hosts qualified automatically. Everybody knew where they stood from the start of qualification. If you finish in X position in your qualification group, you qualify for the tournament/for a playoff.
In this process, they don't. It'll also depend on how host nations are doing in qualification. If Wales (for example) are the only team that fail to qualify on merit, then they get given a back-up berth, which means that 1 team who would otherwise have qualified get dropped.
You could end up with a farcical situation where, if Ireland win on the last day and qualify on merit, then (for example) Turkey's second place finish in another group earns them a spot in the finals, but if Ireland lose on the last day and consequently need the back-up berth, then Turkey's second place is no longer enough.
Last edited by osarusan; 10/10/2023 at 12:53 PM.
You could end up with the realistic scenario where for example, England and Scotland qualify automatically. Say we're neck and neck for a place, Wales are third in their group and NI are 4th/5th. If we win, the Nordies qualify, if we lose, we get the bonus slot and they don't go to the euros...
Casement may not be ready (suitable, more like), but for other reasons, not because of "opposition". On the contrary, politicians from Stormont, Westminster and even the Dail are falling over themselves to promise money for it.
It wouldn't be the "worst idea" only if eg you considered awarding Israel a host spot, with the proviso that they play their games somewhere on the Gaza strip.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, should Casement not turn out to be suitable, then there are several suitable stadia already existing in England, which could step in at a moment's notice.
Tbf though, at least Leo gets to divert some of your hard-earned taxes towards a GAA stadium in Northern Irela... er, I mean The North.
And what better measure could there be to ensure National Reunification?
In that situation, we'd still be less unworthy of a spot than NI or Wales, so NI's elimination wouldn't bother me as much as the fact that some other, non-host nation who qualified on merit would be eliminated.
I really shouldn't be surprised that the legacy of this co-hosting will be a GAA stadium in another country. And yet.
You'd think that we actually lost the bid given how much negativity there is on here. We all know that we are massively lacking in football infrastructure at every level and every corner of the country. Hosting major tournament games wouldn't have been anywhere near my mandate for the FAI but now that we have it I'm delighted. Qualification is now massively weighted in our favour and I for one am happy to take any advantage that's going. If it wasn't use it'd be someone else.
The Aviva was only ever going to be the one non-GAA stadium in Ireland capable of hosting major tournaments within the decade. The way I see it we are getting an awful lot in return for very little.
A more realistic bid for building a legacy would be for an under-21 Championship in 10-15 years time with NI providing 4 stadiums with 20K+ each.
The Nations league now comes into even sharper focus. Where we finish in the 26/27 version will likely be what's used to determine the rankings of the host nations. If we can get promoted in the next version it'd guarantee a top 16 finish in 26/27, if we were to get relegated (much more plausible) there's a decent chance we could be the only host nation in league C come the important iteration and we'd be completely dependent on 3 of the other 4 doing it proper to qualify.
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