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Georgia Pushes Ahead With Euro 2020 Bid

16th May 2012

UEFAUEFA’s deadline for receiving declarations of interest in the tournament passed on Tuesday and had presented the real risk of European football’s governing body receiving only one bid, from Turkey. Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili revealed in March that his country intended to join forces with neighbouring Azerbaijan to submit a joint bid.

However, despite having never hosted an international sporting event of such magnitude, the Georgian Football Federation said on Tuesday that it would proceed with a solo effort to allow Azerbaijan to focus on Baku’s bid for the 2020 Olympic Games. “The countries' governments came to a mutual agreement that Georgia will make an independent bid and Azerbaijan will concentrate on the Olympics project,” said Federation spokesman Otto Giorgadze, according to Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Earlier on Tuesday, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland formally declared their interest in co-hosting Euro 2020. However, the three nations have stressed that their application is at the ‘interest’ stage. Potential Euro 2020 bidders are faced with the challenge of meeting the infrastructure requirements arising from UEFA’s decision to expand the European Championships from 16 to 24 teams when France stages the 2016 competition. Football Association of Wales chief executive Jonathan Ford told BBC Sport: “It is not a bid, it's a declaration of interest and that will allow us to obtain the information from UEFA so that we can fully assess and determine, independently and together, whether we should submit a bid.”

The Turkish Football Federation submitted its bid to UEFA to host Euro 2020 last month, but question marks continue to surround how the proposal will fit in with Istanbul’s tilt at the 2020 Olympics. UEFA has also been deeply concerned by the major match-fixing scandal that has dominated the headlines in Turkish football over the past year.

Source: sportbusiness.com