Bid did not help domestic game

Emmet Malone / On Soccer: There may be a variety of opinions over why Ireland and Scotland's joint bid to host the 2008 European Championship finals bit the dust so gloriously last week, but there can presumably be far less debate about the fact that the game will have gained little in either country as a result of the approximately €2 million spent over 18 months on pursuing the project.

That the bid failed to make the shortlist of three compiled by UEFA made it somewhat inevitable that the administrators involved in championing it would again be treated as a collective laughing stock. There is, however, some measure of irony in the fact that the same people ridiculed for not thinking quite big enough when it came to Ireland's preparations for the World Cup were belittled for thinking that the country might play a part in hosting a major sporting event.

On the face of it, the failure of the bid even to make that final list of three appears to support the argument that the two associations bungled things completely and that they got what they deserved for straying so hopelessly out of their depth.

The reasons behind the bid's inability to command sufficient support from first the National Teams Committee and then the Executive Committee to seriously challenge the Swiss and Austrian campaign are, however, not quite as straightforward as might be assumed.

Was the uncertainty over Ireland's ability to deliver two stadiums a factor? Of course, and that uncertainty was surely exacerbated on the day before Thursday's vote by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's comments to the effect that the Government would "do its best" to meet its end of the deal, as well as the spectacular fudge contained in the final bid documentation over which venues would end up being used.

The Hungarians, on the other hand, put forward a bid that envisaged in excess of €3 billion in spending on sports facilities and major infrastructural projects. Much of the detail involved in what was a vastly wide-reaching proposal was glossed over (a bid official dismissed it as "counting toilets" in Geneva) and the ability of the Hungarian government to deliver on its part in the scheme must have been in considerable doubt. The bid, though, not only made the short-list but also ended up outlasting the joint effort by Greece and Turkey to join the eventual winners in the final round of voting.

The lack of political support from within UEFA is also said to have done for the Celtic bid and again there is clearly some truth in the charge. The support of Sepp Blatter's people on the committee for the Swiss and Austrians always made them favourites.

Then there is the claim that the Austrians were likely to win as it was their third time bidding, although surely the logic of this is that we have to be prepared to lose a couple of times if we seriously think we should be given a major competition in the future.

Another take on what went wrong is provided by going back three years to the decision on where the tournament would be held in 2004. On that occasion the Spanish pointed out that they were, in stark contrast to either the Portuguese or the Austrian/Hungarian bidders, effectively ready to stage the competition at the time of the selection process. There were big stadiums, plenty of fans, huge media interest and more hotels than you could shake a stick at. The Spanish came third of three and made it clear afterwards that they would not be troubling UEFA again for quite some time.

What UEFA did three years ago, however, made some sense in footballing terms. The Portuguese game stood to profit hugely from being awarded the tournament while the impact in Spain would have been less pronounced. Similarly, the staging of the tournament in Switzerland and Austria will involve tremendous benefits for the domestic leagues of both countries.

By contrast, four of Scotland's six stadiums were already built and one of them, Murrayfield, would only ever have hosted soccer matches during Euro 2008. Only two league clubs would actually have benefited from the bid.

HERE, things were much worse as Ireland was bidding to become the first country ever to stage even a part of a major soccer tournament without using any of its domestic league's grounds. Assuming for a moment that the bid had been successful but that the FAI's hopes that it would provide the required catalyst for the construction of the national stadium had been dashed, the Irish end of the tournament would have been staged in grounds owned by the IRFU and GAA.

The likely legacy to the game here might well have amounted to no more than the fact that a portion of the crowd at home internationals would no longer have been obliged to watch the games from temporary seating.

The boys on the Executive Committee may be a cynical enough bunch, but the fact that the Hungarians got as far as they did suggests that they at least kept an eye out for what Bill Clinton identified as "the vision thing".

Such vast expenditure on stadiums here would, of course, be out of the question, but if the FAI cannot go to UEFA with a firm plan to use even one soccer stadium in hosting a tournament then it has little cause for complaint when it gets passed over.

A commitment, meanwhile, to invest just a fraction of the money - that will be poured into eight grounds over the next four years by last week's winners - into league venues here and perhaps use the improved grounds to hosts a variety of European or world youth tournaments, would at least have given Irish football a more tangible stake in the outcome of the process. It might also have necessitated a serious analysis of the financial and other commitments really required if the senior game here is to be improved.

That in itself would have represented a worthwhile return to the Irish game on the cost of the bid even if it failed anyway.

Instead there is to be a co-operation on a youth coaching programme with a website. And, of course, talks in January on whether to do it all again in four years time.

It's hard to imagine that either the Hungarians or UEFA will worry too much about what way that decision goes.