At least three countries - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - are already planning a possible bid to host Euro 2016. Not as rival bids, but as triple co-hosts. Or tri-hosts, if you prefer. It’s all “tentative” right now, but it could happen.
I’ve long believed that having European Championships co-hosts is a detriment to the tournament. Mostly because out of 16 teams, two don’t have to qualify. That’s one eighth of all teams. And in some cases those teams wouldn’t necessarily have qualified - see Austria and Switzerland this past summer.
Expanding the Euros to 24 team (which is on the cards for 2016) would make co-hosting less problematic. But if we expand the number of hosts along with the number of teams, we end up back where we started, with one eighth of the teams qualifying automatically.
On one hand I’d love to see Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland pulling triple co-hosting duties in 2016. The atmosphere would be incredible and there would be plenty of fantastic stadiums to choose from - Hampden Park, Ibrox Stadium, Celtic Park, Millennium Stadium (pictured). But on the other hand I get the feeling that three co-hosts is at least one too many.
Source: www.worldcupblog.org
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