Euro 2016 of football green light to a French candidature

“The idea of a candidature” for the Euro-2016, advanced in April by the president of the FF, Jean-Pierre Escalettes, was made more precise Tuesday with the support brought to this project by Bernard Laporte, Secretary of State to the Sports.
“This Euro-2016, I want it! ”, the old head coatch of the XV of France in L’Equipe launches thus. And Mr. Laporte to outline a calendar: “the UEFA will indicate an organizing country in 2011. We will have to thus deposit officially our candidates’ file at the end of 2008 or at the beginning of 2009. But for that it should be waited until the UEFA addresses a circular letter in this direction to the whole of the national federations.”
If this dream became reality, France would organize its 3rd championship of Europe, 32 years after the latest (in 1984, before there had been the edition of 1960, but in another formula) and 18 years after the 2nd World cup held in France (1998, after that of 1938).
But France is not yet there. The process is only at its beginnings. “the UEFA for the moment is concentrated on the Euro-2008 (in Austria and Switzerland) and on the Euro-2012 (in Poland and Ukraine) and then our candidature (the first) will start others of them”, Mr. Escalettes commented on besides, questioned by AFP.
The designation of the ticket Polono-Ukrainian had been a motive fluid besides in the reflection of Mr. Escalettes, who had specified last April: “If there is a East-West alternation, one would not be badly placed.”
Previously, France had been interested in the organization of the Championship of Europe 2012 before withdrawing race in 2005 not to obstruct the candidature of Paris for the Olympic Games 2012, finally allotted to London.
Tuesday, the president of the FF logically stated himself “charmed of this enthusiastic support of the state”, after the announcement of Mr. Laporte. But, in pragmatic good, the French leader prefers to concentrate on the next stage: to study the feasibility of such a project before finalizing the candidature.
“The year 2008 will be one year exploratory, explains Mr. Escalettes. It is necessary to look at the state of the stages, the state of the projects or their advance. There will be certainly a joint industrial commission between the ministry and the federation.”
The stages are obviously in the middle of the challenge. For the moment, in spite of the Worldone, France shows a delay on the level of the sporting enclosures.
“The idea, it is to have stages of 40,000 places minimum, then of 50,000 or more for the semi-finals and 60,000 or more for the final, which would be held at the Stade de France, there there is no mystery”, Mr. Escalettes details.
“In Lille, it should be seen where one is, in Lyon, it will be necessary to see with Jean-Michel Aulas, in Marseilles, there was a project of cover of the stage, it should be seen where one is also, adds the president of the FF. It will have to be looked on the Atlantic facade if there are possibilities. In Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier, one is below 40,000 places for the moment.”
But the candidature of the Euro-2016 would be of course the occasion dreamed “as a whole to federate the French sport around a carrying project” and to obtain “new stages (which) could still be useful in 40 or 50 years” and “not only for football”, as Mr. Escalettes underlines it.
In 1984, it is a certain Michel Platini who raised the trophy. Today, the former host of Blue is in charge of the UEFA. The owner of European football must be impartial and will not play a part in the attribution of the Euro-2016, but France dreams already of a wink of the history.