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Irish cost Scotland in voting Posted: Thursday December 12, 2002 7:35 PMGENEVA (Reuters) -- Austria and Switzerland swept to victory in the race to stage the 2008 European championship on Thursday because their bid scored highly with all the criteria laid down by European soccer's governing body UEFA. They could guarantee eight stadiums with a capacity of at least 30,000 seats, the political backing of their governments, a first-class infrastructure of hotels and transport and security. None of the others could match that and it cost them votes. The biggest upset in the voting process by executive committee members during their four-hour meeting was the collapse of support for the Scotland-Ireland bid. Long regarded as one of the front-runners along with Austria-Switzerland, their bid was not recommended to the executive committee by the all-important National Teams Committee. That committee comprises 10 members who carried out the site inspections during the autumn and recommended to the executive committee which bids warranted a place in the final round of voting -- and they did not include the Celtic bid. The executive committee could have ignored the recommendation but, as David Will, Scotland's FIFA vice-president and a non-voting UEFA Executive Committee observer said: "I am astounded our bid was not recommended to the executive. It crucified us and we never recovered from that. "We scored equally with the Austrians and Swiss on the technical evaluation, I simply cannot understand where we fell down. None of us understands it and I am trying to find out why." A senior member of the committee told Reuters: "Their bid fell down on three points. "The first was the concentration of most of their stadiums in just three cities -- Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin -- the second was a perceived lack of political unity from the Irish towards the bid and the third the unresolved question of which stadiums would be used in Ireland. "Other bids had that question completely resolved. The Scotland-Ireland bid did not." Nine-three Because a total of 13 countries were involved in the bidding process, six of UEFA's 14-man executive committee had to declare an initial conflict of interest. But after the seven bids were whittled down to three -- Austria-Switzerland, Hungary and Greece-Turkey -- 12 of the 14 took part in the final voting leaving Giangiorgio Spiess of Switzerland and Senes Erzik of Turkey unable to vote. The bids from Bosnia-Croatia, Russia, the four-way Nordic bid from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland and the Scotland-Ireland bid were the early fallers leaving the final three in the hunt. The first round of final voting ended with Austria-Switzerland polling five votes, Hungary five and Greece-Turkey two. The second round saw Austria-Switzerland sweep to victory with a 9-3 majority as UEFA opted to go for the safer option and hand the tournament to the bid long regarded as the favorite. Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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