Turkiye turns to quest for hosting football Euros after Champions League final

GENEVA: Turkiye’s quest to host the men’s European Championship is among the great unfulfilled goals in world soccer. Having newly re-elected state President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sit next to UEFA leader Aleksander Čeferin at the Champions League final in Istanbul on Saturday should only help before Turkiye’s next two tournament bids are put to votes on Oct. 10.

Turkiye is up against the joint UK-Ireland bid to host Euro 2028 and is in a Euro 2032 duel with Italy. The 2032 edition is the likely target with a widespread belief 2028 is going to the British and Irish who switched from trying to be UEFA’s preferred candidate in the 2030 World Cup race. Voters for hosting the 24-team Euros tournaments will be members of the 20-strong UEFA executive committee who also sat with Erdoğan in the VIP section to see Manchester City beat Inter Milan on Saturday.

“We absolutely would like to win the bid because we see that our country is always capable of organizing such big-scale events successfully,” Turkiye Football Federation president Mehmet Büyükekşi told The Associated Press in Istanbul ahead of the final. That was before fans complained on social media about logistical problems getting to and from Atatürk Olympic Stadium. Turkiye has tried to persuade UEFA of its hosting potential for so long that Erdoğan was not yet in national office when in 2002 the first candidacy failed.

That was a joint bid with Greece for Euro 2008. After 20 years of Erdoğan as Turkish prime minister then president since 2014, including several photo opportunities of him kicking a football, the construction project he has overseen would be key to any vote win at UEFA’s Swiss headquarters. “We believe that Turkiye’s 85 million population, the stadiums