ROB HARRIS
AP Sports Writer
GENEVA (AP) — Wembley Stadium in London will host the semifinals and final of the first continent-wide European Championship in 2020, ending a run of bidding failures by England.
England, which had failed in bids for the 2006 and 2018 World Cups, celebrated Wembley being unanimously picked by UEFA after Germany withdrew Bayern Munich’s stadium from the running just before the vote on Friday in Geneva.
“I know the party side of London, the way the English welcome people,” UEFA President Michel Platini said. “Wembley will doubtless live up to the responsibility.”
England hosted Euro ’96 with the final at the old Wembley. The venue has been rebuilt since then into a 90,000-capacity stadium, and staged two Champions League finals in the past three years.
Now the target for England, which lost the Euro ’96 semifinal to Germany at Wembley, is to ensure it reaches the last-four again in 2020.
“We have a good young side at the moment and some will be around in six years’ time,” English Football Association chairman Greg Dyke said. “It will be a great ambition for them to take us to Wembley in 2020 … it’s an incentive.”
The new format gave a chance for countries that wouldn’t necessarily have a chance to host the tournament on their own to stage some games.
Baku, Azerbaijan, was one of the cities awarded a quarterfinal and three group stage games. The others were Munich, Rome’s Olympic Stadium and the new Zenit St. Petersburg venue in Russia.
Copenhagen, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Dublin, Bilbao, Budapest, Brussels and Glasgow also got three group stage games, plus a round of 16 match.
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