Johansson denies Euro bids decided

SOCCER/News: UEFA president Lennart Johansson has distanced himself from quotes attributed to him by Swiss newspaper Le Dimanche which implied several of the bids to host the Euro 2008 championship were already effectively out of the running.

Johansson was quoted in an interview as citing the Moscow theatre siege and the crowd trouble between Greece's Panathinaikos and Turkey's Fenerbahce as reasons why UEFA might look unfavourably on the two bids while other bids, including the Scotland and Ireland campaign, were sufficiently flawed to leave the Nordic bid and particularly the joint Austria/Switzerland bid as firm favourites ahead of the executive meeting in Geneva on December 12th when the final decision will be made.

"Contrary to recent media reports, all bids for hosting of Euro 2008 will have the same chance of success when the final decision is made," the Swede said.

"I am unhappy," he continued, "to see that some of my recent comments to the press were taken out of context and appear to have been used to try and gain an unfair advantage for certain competing bids by demeaning other bids. Actions such as these do not help the bidding process and spoil the climate in the run-up to the decision."

Johansson's comments were greeted with some relief by representatives of all of the bids who had initially felt hard done by.

"We were surprised by the original comments," said Simon Lyons of the Ireland/Scotland bid, "and we are very pleased that he has cleared the matter up and ensured that the whole process is viewed with the level of integrity that we always expected from Mr Johansson."

The seven candidates to host the 2008 finals comprise solo bids from Russia and Hungary and joint bids from Ireland-Scotland, Greece-Turkey, Bosnia-Croatia, Austria-Switzerland and the Nordic nations.

The Irish under-19s, meanwhile, have been drawn against England, Switzerland and Slovenia in the second phase of this year's qualifying competition for the European Youth Championship, the finals of which will be held in Liechtenstein in July.

It is a tough line-up for the Republic who were seeded in the competition because of the achievements of previous Irish sides and had therefore skipped the first round of qualifying groups.

England, in particular, will provide stern opposition for Brian Kerr's side but the Swiss have a growing reputation in underage competition while the Slovenians have already caused some surprise by topping a first stage group that included Yugoslavia and Scotland.

One of the major issues still to be decided is where the round-robin competition will be held and with the Swiss having indicated they do not wish to host it and the English and Slovenians having provided the venues for their initial groups, it may, under UEFA regulations, come down to the Irish having first refusal.

"Obviously I'd love to have it here," said Kerr yesterday, "but there would be some concern within the FAI regarding the cost of it which I can understand. What I'd be arguing is that between the crowd we could expect for the England game and the (€40,000) grant from UEFA we could pretty much cover the cost."

Kerr added that he intends to take the matter up again with his employers and a final decision is due to be made before the end of January.