That penalty was heroic. I am now realising that every single shoot out after the Euro final gives me PTSD though, how long does it take to get over that ****e?
Yeah really pleased he scored that penalty, particularly after failing to score from one earlier in the game. Missing two penalties in the final would have been hard to get over if you lose the final too.
Not bidding for the WC by the looks of it, so next time we might be able to host I will be 51 (32 now for context ). Am I the only one not particularly interested in the prospect of England hosting the Euros again? I feel like it’s been done. Much rather let Scotland/Wales/NI/ROI have a Euros to themselves (they could cobble enough venues between them). A 5 host Euros just feels bloated.
They wouldn't be able to provide enough stadia without England. Off the top of my head only Hamden, Celtic Park, Ibrox, Croke Park and the Millennium Stadium would have sufficient capacity. Possibly Cardiff's ground as well but not sure. That's not enough.
I reckon 1 Murrayfield 2 Hampden 3 Celtic Park 4 Ibrox 5 Principality Stadium 6 Cardiff City Stadium 7 Casement Park (controversial but I don’t see how you can upgrade Windsor Park to a large enough capacity) 8 Aviva Stadium 9 Croke Park 9 is small but would be enough. Swansea and Cork have stadiums that could probably be redeveloped easily enough and Aberdeen will have a new stadium which could be hiked to 30,000 in case they need a larger variety of locations. So that’s a minimum of 9, maximum of 12. More than the Qatar World Cup.
Isn't the minimum capacity required over 40k which rules out 2 of those. And it wouldn't be cost effective to increase capacities for one tournament when you can just use English stadia.
I am not 100% on the Euros. France and the Euros just gone had stadiums under 40k, Germany has a minimum of 40k. I think generally they go with over 40, but they allow a couple of exceptions. Belfast certainly won’t be able to provide a venue over 40 and they are included in the bid either way. I mean currently I guess it will be 8 venues from England with 1 each from Sco / Wal / NI / ROI, which is ok but it’s spread a bit thin.
The advantage with using England as well is that everyone in the UK will have a stadium within a couple of hours travel time.
Thought we might be moving forward on this, but for some reason they seem to have back tracked, both Switzerland and Ivory Coast friendlies are at Wembley for some unfathomable reason. I mean we would expect most games to be at Wembley, but they should at least ensure one game a year is played on the road. Friendlies should be mostly away from Wembley unless it’s against Germany, Brazil etc. Lowest ranked qualifier should always be on the road too e.g. San Marino, Leichtenstein etc. It should also be a different region each year, along the lines of Villa Park St James Park Old Trafford Carrow Road King Power Stadium Ashton Gate Elland Road St Mary’s
Maybe St Mary’s could use this as a piggy back to have a minor renovation seeing as the roof is (allegedly) shagged. You know, if they deign to give the South of England a venue.
Was discussing this with the flatmate. Outside of London the stadiums are really very Northern centric. People were debating whether the other Nations could hold it without England. The answer is highly unlikely. NI have no feasible stadiums(Casement sadly a pipe dream atm), ROI just have Aviva and Croke Park (if allowed), Scotland have Parkhead, Ibrox, Murrayfield and Hampden and Wales have Millenium with the Liberty and Cardiff City at a stretch. Also they don't seem to like too many stadiums in the same city which would probably rule out one of Glasgow's. This all takes me back to Scotland and Ireland looking to host Euro 2008. I was fully convinced that we would win but in reality it was a complete shambles. Ireland had no definite stadiums to offer at this point. There was the farcical situation of them bringing the delegates out to a greenfield site in Abbotstown being the sum of our ambitions!
Hopefully they do better than the 2018 bid where the designated South East venue was Milton Keynes of all places. Because the number of English venues will be limited I hope they keep London to just Wembley and let the rest of the country share what is available, even if it means dropping some higher capacity venues in London, as well as the Etihad and Everton’s new project outside of that. We could face competition from the Amex, but the catchment for St Mary’s is much larger. There could be a fudge for Casement where the development finally gets pushed through on the proviso that the NI football team can use it for the Euros, which would mean there was something in it for both communities. Although I’m sure it is more complex than that alone.
The Athletic did an article about a year ago, to illustrate what Euro 2020 might have looked like if it was only played in the UK. Completely hypothetical of course, but they suggested: Group A matches: Millennium Stadium and Tottenham Stadium. (With Bath, Brighton and Southampton used as training bases.) Group B matches: St James' Park and Stadium of Light Group C matches: Anfield and Etihad Stadium Group D matches: Wembley and Glasgow (With St George's Park and Edinburgh used as training bases.) Group E matches: Old Trafford and Pride Park (or King Power) Group F matches: Emirates Stadium and Villa Park Obviously that doesn't include any Irish stadia. And the reasoning for pairing Wembley and Glasgow was because us and Scotland were in the same group, which is unlikely to be replicated in 2028. So there's little chance that the plan for 2028 will look exactly like the above. But it might not be too far off.
I’m currently going; 8 England / 1 Scotland / 1 Wales / 1 Northern Ireland / 1 Republic of Ireland 1 London - Wembley Stadium - 90,000 2 Manchester - Old Trafford - 74,000 3 Liverpool - Anfield - 61,000 4 Newcastle - St James Park - 51,000 5 Leeds - Elland Road - 50,000 (assuming redevelopment) 6 Birmingham - Villa Park - 42,000 7 Leicester - King Power Stadium - 42,000 (redevelopment likely) 8 Southampton - St Mary’s Stadium - 32,000 9 Glasgow - Hampden Park - 51,000 10 Cardiff - Principality Stadium - 74,000 11 Belfast - Casement Park - 35,000 (Controversial but the only realistic possibility) 12 Dublin - Aviva Stadium - 51,000 That would meet the criteria (3 under 40k venues allowed). Each venue would get at least 3 group games and 1 knockout game. I am also working hard on the assumption that the FA would make a concerted effort to spread games around England with the limited number of venues, 1 stadium per city and some smaller capacity venues chosen over larger venues I.e St Mary’s getting the nod over the Stadium of Light, Etihad, Bramley Moore and a bunch of London venues.
Whether or not they do restrict it to one venue per city will be interesting - because if they did award matches to multiple London and Manchester stadia, it kind of becomes difficult to not do likewise for Glasgow. So they either do stick to one venue per city (which rules out some big stadia), or they pretty much have half the matches concentrated in just three cities.
To be fair Qatar has only one city and more than 95% of the countries population live there. l worked Lusail and another stadium (DC4) when l worked in the Middle East. Lusail was a nightmare project, one of the worst l had the misfortune to work on in my long and not so illustrious career.
