Dublin well poised for a fair share

More than a decade after their bid with Scotland to host Euro 2008 went down in flames, the FAI are back in Geneva, rather more hopeful of having something to celebrate when the white smoke starts to emerge from the Uefa's Executive Committee (ExCo) meeting around lunchtime and the 13 host cities for the 2020 event are announced.

The association, which is hoping to be awarded a package of three group games and a second-round match, will have had its confidence bolstered by the technical reports released last week but they’ll know that the history of these things is littered with good bids that failed for all sort of reasons, many of them bad, and there will be some anxiety amongst the Irish representatives until they are sure of success.

A total of 19 associations have made bids with two (London and Munich) going head-to-head for the semi-finals and final. The loser there will become one of 18 chasing 12 “standard packages” – four of which come with quarter-finals, the rest with round of 16 games.

Dublin is only in contention for the latter as the Aviva Stadium or Dublin Arena as it will be known again for the purposes of the process – is not large enough to host one of the tournament's last seven games.

Of those chasing the eight basic packages, though, the Irish capital looks to be one of the safest bets with the Uefa’s assessment generally positive on almost every aspect of the bid.

The report is upbeat about the stadium, governance and mobility, all headings under which each bid will be specifically marked in the briefings provided to the 17 ExCo members today.

Rivals might wonder about the way it glosses over our relative remoteness and the slight generosity of its assessment of the transport links between airport and city centre but few of the bids are without issues in these areas and several face more daunting challenges. Almost exceptionally in Dublin's case a particular note is made of the determination of other stakeholders – Dublin City Council is most likely the prime example – to make the whole thing work. That might be taken as a given but an otherwise strong bid from Stockholm, for instance, can't have been helped by the specific inclusion of a statement to the effect that absolutely no public funding of the project is in anyway envisaged.

The way in which some others have handicapped themselves is more puzzling. Jerusalem’s bid, for instance, appears not to have included the number of hotels beds that will be available while it is said to be short on detail regarding the venue and weak in relation to transport from the airport, which is more than 50 kilometres away.

Several of the report summaries include World Bank assessments of the political or economic situation in the particular country but its authors actually acknowledge themselves that situation is "complex".

It's hard to imagine there wasn't an element of ironic humour intended in relation to the Uefa assessment noting that the proposed perimeter security fence around the stadium would not meet minimum required height.

Much more damaging from Uefa’s point of view is the suggestion that there is a “high risk” of failing to meet the organisation’s commitments to the tournament’s commercial sponsors around the venue.

The assessments of Minsk and Skopje make them seem like long shots. Sofia's seems solid enough. Sure, it has some flaws but they all look surmountable by comparison with some of their rivals. Still, the fact that the local authorities failed to waive the 25 per cent surcharge on airport charges for flights on weekends, public holidays and late at night just suggests a lack of the sort of love to which many in Uefa generally feel they are entitled. Bulgaria, though, like Israel – whose Avraham Luzon is a member of the Stadium and Security Committee – has somebody at the ExCo meeting where the decision will be taken and, while they are not actually allowed to vote on their own bids, it's hard, very hard, not to imagine that that might make some sort of difference.

You could pick holes in Bilbao's bid on a number of fronts but Uefa vice-president Angel Maria Villar Llona is a pretty big hitter and let's just say you wouldn't bet against his country getting a share of the pie.

Two ExCo members, the Russian and Ukrainian ExCo ones, might take a particular interest in the St Petersburg bid which is technically excellent by all accounts but, well, a tad politically sensitive. There have already been calls for Russia to lose the 2018 World Cup and you have to wonder whether Uefa wants to face the possibility of dealing with the fallout from a severe escalation in the country’s political isolation.

Uefa president Michel Platini declares himself "a romantic" in love with the idea of sending bits of the tournament to countries who could never realistically hope to host it all. That might just spur him on to present a bit to one of the most unlikely venues but Dublin clearly qualifies as somewhere that fits the general bill and as one of the Irish bid team observes: "You have to ask why they wouldn't give a bit of it to us."

The truth is, there really doesn’t seem to be any very good reason and that, ultimately, should prove good enough.