Finland together with the Nordic countries applied for the 2025 Women’s European Football Championship. Now Sweden and Denmark are applying for the 2029 European Football Championship together.
The Swedish and Danish football associations said on Thursday that they intend to jointly apply for the 2029 Women’s European Football Championship.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland jointly applied for the 2025 European Championship, but the competition was awarded to Switzerland.
Now Denmark and Sweden are going to try their luck together.
Chairman of the Finnish Football Association Ari Lahten according to Sweden and Denmark’s decision is understandable.
– We went through UEFA’s evaluation report on our joint application. The evaluators considered that four countries are too many applicant countries, the distances are a bit long and so on, Lahti tells Urheilu.
The men’s European football championships played in the summer of 2021 were organized in a total of 11 cities. Originally there were 13 competition cities, but Dublin and Bilbao dropped out of the host cities due to corona restrictions. The games received criticism for, among other things, long air travel and emissions.
In Finland, only one stadium meets the requirements
In the joint application of the four Nordic countries, the games in Finland would have been played at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki and Ratina in Tampere. These are the only sufficiently large stadiums in Finland with natural grass as the base.
Uefa’s evaluators were not enthusiastic about playing matches in Tampere.
– For Finland, a special minus was that we actually only had one stadium that fully met the requirements, the Olympic Stadium. The suitability of Ratina in Tampere was criticized a little, Lahti says.
Lahti admits that the games getting out of hand was disappointing. Finland has no plans to apply for the Games alone or together with others.
– Finland has absolutely no chance of succeeding on its own. The requirements for stadiums are so tough that it is not realistic. We have no plans to be part of any other application group.
The Finnish Football Association intends to support the application of Denmark and Sweden.
– We hope that we could get the games close so that as many Finns as possible could watch, especially if Finland made it to the games, Lahti reasons.