The five-nation bid involving the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to host the Euro 2028 finals got a boost last week when UEFA confirmed that Turkey and Italy had requested to merge their bid for Euro 2032. However, Turkey has not withdrawn their bid to host Euro 2028, so they remain a rival to the five-nation bid, but looks fairly certain within European football circles that the 2028 tournament will be held in the UK and Ireland.
If the five nation bid is successful, some issues will need to be sorted. One is how many countries would qualify automatically as all five countries are unlikely to be given an automatic place in the final tournament. Informed sources suggest that two or maybe three counties would qualify automatically and no doubt one of those would be England.
In Ireland Croke Park is not now needed and the two venues which would host games would be the Aviva Stadium in Dublin and the new Casement Park in Belfast where construction of the new stadium hasn’t yet started. An FAI spokesman said: ‘‘We have a very strong bid and look forward to presenting it to UEFA on Oct. 10 as planned. As a bidding partnership, our focus is to host an outstanding UEFA EURO 2028 that delivers great benefits for our nations and communities, and for football at home and across Europe."
