Germany will host the UEFA Euro 2024 Championship as it emerged the overwhelming favourite during the final bid vote on Thurswept away the rights to host the 2024 European Championship defeating Turkey with 12-4 vote in its favour by the UEFA Executive Committee in Nyon, Switzerland on Thursday.
This is the fourth defeat for Turkey after they lost contests to host Euro 2008, 2012 and 2016.
Germany, hosts of FIFA World Cup 2006 and Euro 1988 as West Germany before the Berlin Wall came down, will host the 2024 edition of the European quadrennial men’s national tournament as a unified country.
Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin announced Germany as the winner of the bid to host the UEFA Euro 2024. “The procedure was transparent. The voting was democratic. Every democratic decision is the right decision so I can only say I am looking forward to seeing a fantastic Euro in 2024,” Ceferin said.
Former World Cup winning captain Philipp Lahm and ambassador for Germany’s bid, said, “We have amazing stadiums, fans who love football, first and foremost we have people who love celebrating with other Europeans. We will organise a huge football party in Germany.”
Lahm will now serve at the helm of the Germany’s Euro 2024 organising committee. German Football Association (DFB) had announced last month that the 34-year-old former footballer will become the organising committee chairman if the country’s bid succeed.
Former Bayern Munich star, who led Germany to win the 2014 FIFA World Cup before retiring from international football, has served as an ambassador for the nation’s bid to host Euro 2024. He retired from football last year having won 113 caps for Germany.
The German Football Association (DFB) in March 2017 had initially made a formal declaration of interest to host Euro 2024. The event now will be the first major men’s national team tournament staged in Germany since the 2006 FIFA World Cup, an event that was considered a huge success but has ultimately since been overshadowed by investigations into the bidding process.
In September 2017, the DFB cut a further four stadiums from its bid plan for Euro 2024, finalising a set of 10 venues for the tournament. This was the second set of cuts after an initial 18 venues came forward to play a part in the bid. The DFB settled on a final bid plan that includes Berlin (Olympiastadion), Dortmund (Signal Iduna Park), Düsseldorf (Esprit Arena), Frankfurt am Main (Commerzbank-Arena), Gelsenkirchen (Veltins-Arena), Hamburg (Volksparkstadion), Köln (RheinEnergieStadion), Leipzig (Red Bull Arena), München (Allianz Arena) and Stuttgart (Mercedes-Benz Arena).
While Germany boasted of its already available infrastructure, Turkey scored over Germany with all stadiums given rent-free to UEFA by their owner, the Ministry of Sports. UEFA’s evaluation notes a “fair cost” of renting German stadiums. A currency crisis in Turkey has seen the lira lose almost half its value against UEFA’s working currency, the euro, in the past year.
Germany was favoured to win the bid, while Turkey faced a major setback after UEFA’s evaluation report into the bids by the two nations last week marked Turkey’s bid as a ‘risk’, with concerns about its’ inability to take a tough stand on human rights violations as well as limited hotel capacity in the country.
Euro 2024 will feature 24 teams, taking place in June and July, with 51 games scheduled for up to 32 days. Berlin will stage the final, while matches will also take place in Cologne, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart.
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