By Mark Baber
January 25 – UEFA President has Michel Platini announced the key bidding criteria for hosting of the Euro 2020 final tournament – to be staged in 13 cities across the continent.
The matches will be split into 13 packages, with 12 ordinary packages including three group matches and one knockout round (round of 16 or quarter-final), and one package including the semi-finals and the final.
There will be a maximum of one venue per country, meaning one stadium for each of the available 13 packages. Both semi-finals and the final will be played in one stadium;
Each association can present up to two bids, one for the ordinary package and one for the semi-finals/final package. Each national association can present the same city for these two bids or two different cities.
Projected stadiums can also be admitted in the bidding process, with a deadline of 2016 for the construction of any new stadium to start, failing which the decision on such a host city could be reviewed.
The required minimum stadium capacities will be:
• 70,000 for semi-finals/final;
• 60,000 for quarter-finals;
• 50,000 for round of 16 and group matches; and
• Up to two exceptions would be allowed for stadiums of a minimum capacity of 30,000 seats, limited to group matches and a round of 16 match.
All teams will need to participate in the qualifying competition with no automatic qualifying for hosts.
A maximum of two host teams will be drawn into each of the six final tournament groups, with each qualified host being guaranteed two home matches in the group phase. There will be no such guarantee for the knockout stages.
For the group stage, the group composition will remain subject to seeding and to a draw. However, the allocation of hosting teams to the groups will also take travel distances into account (for example, and if feasible, with flights not exceeding two hours’ duration between host cities to allow easy access to travelling fans).
The participating teams will be free to choose where to set up their base camp, without the obligation to stay in one of the host countries.
The following timeline for the bidding process has been approved:
• 28 March 2013: Approval of the bidding requirements and bid regulations
• April 2013: Publication of the bid requirements and launch of the bidding phase
• September 2013: Formal confirmation of bids by the candidates
• April/May 2014: Submission of bid dossiers and start of the evaluation phase
• September 2014: Appointment of the host cities by the UEFA Executive Committee
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