STEWART REGAN, the Scottish Football Association chief executive, has credited Sir Alex Ferguson with playing a major part in Glasgow's successful 2020 European Championship bid.
Three group games and one last-16 tie will be staged at Hampden in a tournament which has been revamped on a one-off basis to mark its 60th anniversary. Matches will be spread around multiple hosts with Scotland one of 13 countries staging games. The final and both semi-finals will be at Wembley.
As the venues were announced yesterday after a vote by UEFA's executive committee members it was clear the geographical zoning of games meant Glasgow was up against Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. Hampden won by a single ranking point in UEFA's preferential voting system. Dublin's Aviva Stadium will also host three group games and a last-16 match.
Regan and David Gill, the Manchester United director who is on UEFA's executive committee, both said they believed Ferguson's influence had been important. The former United manager eulogised the Hampden bid earlier this week. Ferguson is also a UEFA coaching ambassador and is well connected within Europe's governing body.
"Sir Alex Ferguson came in last week with a video in support of our bid and spoke passionately about it," a delighted Regan said. "I am sure that must have helped. We knew we had a strong bid. We focused on the fact it is the 60th anniversary and focused on the history and heritage of football.
"We knew Michel Platini [the UEFA president] is a football man and that's what we played strongest on and that's why we used Alex Ferguson. It was football that won the day. This is a tournament about 60 years of European football. We had one of the most famous matches in European football at Hampden Park [the 1960 European Cup final] and we played heavily on that."
Gill said: "Sir Alex was a key factor. I don't think he was the only factor but, clearly, it does help if you have someone like Alex promoting you."
The quarter-finals and three group matches will be held in Munich, Rome, St Petersburg and Baku in Azerbaijan. The other host cities, which will host three group games and a last-16 game, are Copenhagen, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Bilbao, Budapest and Brussels.
As one of the hosts Scotland would play at least two games at home if they qualify. England will also have to qualify and venues for their group matches would be down to the luck of the draw.
The Hampden bid was a collaborative effort involving the SFA, Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, EventScotland and Hampden Park Ltd. Regan said bringing Euro 2020 to Hampden would help realise the Association's strategic plan, Scotland United: A 2020 Vision. "Today's announcement gives us a perfect platform on which to realise our ambitions," he said.
"After a hugely successful Commonwealth Games, and ahead of what will be a memorable Ryder Cup, I am delighted Scotland, Glasgow and Hampden Park will again look forward to being the focus of worldwide attention for Euro 2020."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article