The politics in Uefa meant that Friends arena did not get the European Football Championship

On 19 September 2014, UEFA’s Executive Committee met at Nyon Headquarters. 16 members would decide which 13 cities would be allowed to host the European Football Championship 2020, a championship that would later be moved to the following year.

UEFA’s president, Michel Platini, had a few years earlier put forward the idea that instead of being organized by one or a couple of countries, the European Championships would be spread to many more people. The Frenchman thought it was a great way to celebrate that in 2020 it was 60 years since the first European Championship tournament was played. He brought football Europe with him.

There were 19 applications to the 16th European Championship tournament. One of them came from Sweden, Stockholm and Friends arena. At this time, it was two years since Swedish football’s new national arena was inaugurated. It is an arena of the latest cut with room for 50,000 spectators and a sliding roof. Even though there has been criticism of the acoustics and the lawn, the Swedish Football Association seemed to have a trump card in hand. In other applications for major football championships, it has been necessary to present several arenas that hold the measure. Now it was just about one and the UEFA evaluation group had given it a high rating.

In January 2013, Uefa announced that twelve cities would be allowed to host four European Championship matches, three in group games and one round of 16. The two semifinals and the final would be decided in a 13th city. The requirement to get a European Championship match was that the arena had a capacity for 50,000 spectators. If you wanted the decisive matches, there must be room for 70,000.

With the new criteria, many nations saw the opportunity to participate in arranging the European Championship party and the competition was great, but the Swedish Football Association’s assessment was that the performance that the country’s new and modern national arena could show should be a trump card.

– We thought we had a really good candidacy and it is clear that we were hopeful, says Sune Hellströmer, the union’s former general secretary, who became a senior adviser and had a leading role in the campaign.

But facts are one thing and politics another – it has been shown many times when it comes to the sports world’s votes. When it came to influence in Uefa, Sweden was no longer as well equipped. After Lennart Johansson lost the chairman’s match against Platini in 2007, Sweden lacked representation on the executive committee. UEFA’s general secretary and top official Lars-Christer Olsson had chosen to leave the organization when Platini was elected. Their relationship was strained.

The way Uefa was governed changed overnight. The Nordic model was replaced by a top-down southern European one.

Karen Espelund was the Norwegian representative on the executive committee at this time and experienced the clear change.

– Platini was involved in all decisions, including those at the level of detail. He wanted total control, says Espelund, who was one of the 17 board members who were involved in deciding the fate of Friends.

In advance there had been talk of a geographical combination of venues and Stockholm and Copenhagen were seen as a natural Nordic alternative. If only one of the cities were to be considered, modern Friends should come before the smaller Park, the Danish national arena, which was last renovated in the early 90s.

But when it was time to make a decision, the geographical proximity aspect was abandoned. Instead, the alternatives Copenhagen and Stockholm were set against each other. Denmark’s Allan Hansen was not allowed to vote, but it did not matter. The park defeated Friends with the votes 13-3.

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In retrospect, it has been claimed that Allan Hansen, the former chairman of the Danish Football Association, nevertheless had a decisive significance for it going as it went. When Michel Platini won the power struggle against Lennart Johansson, Hansen was one of the Frenchman’s strongest supporters.

Platini had only one voice, but can be assumed to have had a great influence on the others. Was this his way of paying back?

Karen Espelund says that everyone knows that the Nordics are good at arranging and even though there were views on Friends’ lawn, it was a technicality for the technical report that Friends was high class.

– It is not easy to put into words which political alliances and which values ​​were the basis for us to vote as we did, but I think it is probably right to say that it was politics rather than performance that made Sweden not was chosen, says Espelund.

Copenhagen, together with London, Baku, Dublin, Rome, Amsterdam, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, Glasgow, Bilbao, Munich, Budapest and Brussels, were designated as host cities.

Sofia, Jerusalem, Skopje, Minsk, Cardiff and Stockholm were eliminated.

Of the 13 arenas finally elected, eight of the nations were represented on the Executive Committee.

– It is clear that there were major logistical challenges even when it came to the conflict situation, but I must say that I perceived that part of the process as correct. At the same time, it is not possible to prevent people from talking to each other and how much it affected the votes, we will never find out, says Espelund.

Among the failed arenas, only Friends and and Millennium Stadium in Cardiff met the criterion of 50,000 spectators. Both would get a new chance, when it turned out that the new arena in Brussels would not be completed on time. Friends applied to become a replacement, but now Uefa departed from the previous concept and chose to put the Brussels matches at the already designated Wembley.

Instead, Uefa came to give the Friends Europa League final 2017 and the Champions League final to Cardiff the same year.

– It is clear that it was compensation, says Sune Hellströmer, who even today can feel disappointed that Friends did not get the European Championships.

He too is convinced that it was the game behind the scenes that made the decision.

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That Friends did not get the European Championships contributed to the negative publicity surrounding the arena. For the Swedish Football Association, the arena investment was a major financial setback, which devoured the 300 million they received when they sold the old national arena Råsunda and which forced the association to reduce its ownership sharply. The lawn remains a child of sorrow.

With the result in hand, Hellströmer does not think that there would have been any European Championship matches at Friends, even if Sweden had had more sympathy in UEFA’s inner circles. In April, the news came that Sweden’s European Championship matches will be moved from Dublin and Bilbao because these arenas due to pandemic restrictions can not live up to UEFA’s requirement that 25 percent of the number of spectators the arena has capacity for be able to be in place during the European Championships.

– Considering when this decision was made and the restrictions that exist, I see no possibility that we could have played European Championship matches on Friends, Hellströmer says.

In 2018, the executive committee decided to return to the old concept and gave the European Championship 2024 to Germany. Hellströmer will not be surprised if this year’s European Championships are the only ones spread across the continent. He points out that even if there is no home nation in this European Championship, England will if the team wins its group and goes to the final to play six of seven matches at Wembley.

Karen Espelund, who has left international football and today is the leader in Rosenborg in his hometown Trondheim, says that a European Championship in many countries will always be a big logistical test because you have to take into account many governments, authorities and security aspects. No one could have imagined that the world would also be hit by a pandemic, which made implementation even more difficult.

– I think the lesson from this is that we will return to a more normal model, where one, two or maybe three countries take care of the organizers. At the same time, it is important that it is not just the big countries that arrange, says Espelund.

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