The UEFA EURO 2020 final tournament will be staged in 13 cities across Europe, following a decision taken today by the UEFA Executive Committee at its first meeting of 2013 at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland, the official website uefa.com reports.The matches will be split into 13 different packages, with 12 ordinary packages including three group matches and one knockout round (round of 16 or quarter-final), and one package for the semi-finals and the final;There will only be a maximum of one venue per country, meaning one stadium for each of the available 13 packages. Both semi-finals and the final will be played in one stadium.Each association will be allowed to present up to two bids, one for the ordinary package and one for the semi-finals/final package. Each national association can decide to present the same city for these two bids or two different cities. Projected stadiums will be admitted in the bidding process, with a deadline set in 2016 for the construction of any new stadium to start, failing which the decision on such a host city could be reviewed.All teams will participate in the qualifying competition and the 13 countries staging matches will therefore not be automatically qualified.The timeline for the bidding process has been approved by the UEFA Executive Committee: 28 March 2013: Approval of the bidding requirements and bid regulations; April 2013: Publication of the bid requirements and launch of the bidding phase; September 2013: Formal confirmation of their bid by the candidates; April/May 2014: Submission of bid dossiers and start of the evaluation phase; September 2014: Appointment of the host cities by the UEFA Executive Committee.Romania announced, through the voice of Romanian Football Federation (FRF) President Mircea Sandu, that it wants to host EURO 2020 games. The National Arena could be the stadium on which one or several games will be played. “I talked with the Bucharest Mayor and informed him that I asked UEFA for Bucharest to host games alongside 12 other European cities in 2020, the year that marks 60 years since the first European inter-country competition. I sent the letter to UEFA. A tender book containing the Romanian state’s, Bucharest’s commitments to the organizers has to be filled in by 2014-2015 when the host cities are decided,” Mircea Sandu, member of UEFA’s Executive Committee, stated.
