Euro 2028 LIVE: Uefa announce UK and Ireland as hosts - with Euro 2032 location also confirmed

Noel Mooney, chief executive of the Football Association of Wales, says: “This is the first time [hosting], a special day for Wales. For football, we’ve had great success on pitch since 2016 of course.

“But to bring the tournament to Wales is a special day for us. We’re excited. We want to qualify to make sure hundreds of thousands of people can see Wales play as well.

“Football is huge, it’s the biggest sport in terms of participation. To bring a senior men’s tournament to Cardiff, to Wales, is massive for us, we couldn’t be more excited.

“We’d like the national stadium of Wales to host the opening match - perfect venue - and a quarter-final. That’s up to Uefa to choose. We’ve put forward a schedule of matches, we think Cardiff is perfect for the opener and we look forward to it.

“We hope by hosting, and having these big matches in Cardiff, we can bring Wales to the world in a way it hasn’t been before.”

Euro 2028 will be played across the UK and Ireland after Uefa announced the hosts following a meeting of it’s Executive Committee on Tuesday morning.

The UK and Ireland bid delegation included a presentation from the five Football Association leaders and Wales’ former captain Gareth Bales with six football youth ambassadors on hand to explain how they will support the development and diversity of the game around their local communities.

It was a formality that the UK and Ireland would be awarded the tournament after Turkey’s withdrawal left them as the only remaining bid for Euro 2028.

However, not all the host nations are guaranteed to be participating in their home tournament.

Bale also touched on how the tournament would be beneficial to Wales and why the fans will get excited for it saying: “For me as a Welshman I would love for Cardiff to host the opening match.

“We have the stadium and infrastructure for it. We have held big tournaments in the past so we have the experience.

“Now we’ve had a taste of the Euros in 2016, and the success, being a part of Euro 2020 and the World Cup, the fans especially in Wales have an appetite, are used to qualifying, so I hope we can do that again and give them some more happy times to cheer about.

“Every team would want to qualify on merit, want to go in playing well. Coming through in a campaign, going into the tournament you’ve got confidence behind you.

“Those two back up spots are there just in case and it’s important all teams try and qualify and do best they can and hopefully they all do it automatically anyway.”

Gareth Bale was a part of Wales’ delegation during the UK and Ireland bid for Euro 2028. He spoke to the BBC after the announcement about how he hoped the tournament creates a legacy for the future.

“I think it’s important, especially for Wales, to keep pushing forward and to keep pushing ourselves,” said Bale, “Having a major international tournament in our country, as well as the rest of the UK and Ireland, is massively important.

“I’m grateful to have been a part of [the bidding process] and hopefully it can do a great job. I’m sure the fans will all turn up like they usually do.

“I think the plan for us is to put on another spectacle like we have done amazingly in the past for all those big tournaments and I’m sure we’ll do so again.

“We’re trying to create a legacy and something for the future as well.”

FA chair Debbie Hewitt, spoke to BBC sports editor Dan Roan, after the announcement saying: “This is a huge moment – three years on this journey. To get to this day is an amazing moment for all of the UK and Ireland. It feels very good and hasn’t sunk in yet.

“Nothing is ever a formality. We took nothing for granted. There was still a moment where you want to know and we never thought it was a formality.

“The legacy. That’s were we started. The fact we have a really unified view that we want to leave something behind, quite ground-breaking. The way we’ve worked together, many things you think may divide, but actually it is unified.

When asked whether there are security concerns about hosting games at Wembley after crowd trouble at the Euro 2020 final she replied: “That was a very sad day for English football, no two ways about that. We started with how that reputation is put to bed.

“Learn all the lessons. We did an independent review after that tournament and thought very hard about the security, it comes first.

“Fans come first, if they don’t feel safe in a tournament that’s not a great place to be. We want the reputation to host the most safe tournament, most enjoyable.”

Australia and New Zealand are scrambling to come up with solutions to name the 14 stadiums necessary for a World Cup 2034 bid in time for the 31 October deadline, potentially clearing the way for Saudi Arabia even more.

Fifa‘s requirements state that all of the stadiums must have a capacity of at least 40,000 seats, but there are currently only 11 that fit that profile across the two countries.

What’s more, some of the Australian stadiums that meet the criteria are cricket ovals, with sightlines that aren’t really suitable for football. The bidding documents do state that only four of the named venues need to be “existing stadiums” but it is naturally asking a lot to secure construction commitments in the 26 days between the bidding process opening and closing.

The Prime Minister said he is “highly confident” that jointly hosting Euro 2028 with Ireland will benefit the economy.

Uefa confirmed on Tuesday that the UK and Ireland’s bid to host the tournament has been successful.

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said it is expected to deliver £2.6 billion of socio-economic benefit across the host nations.

Rishi Sunak said he expected the tournament to provide a “massive boost” to the economy, but also stressed wider benefits, saying it would bring the country together and inspire the next generation of football fans.

You already know where the Euro 2028 final will be played. You don’t know know because it hasn’t been announced yet. But when I tell you that the UK and Ireland are hosting the tournament, and when I show you the list of 10 allocated venues, then you already know.

Wembley is the biggest stadium in the best-connected city of the largest host nation. It is the greatest revenue generator. It is the sort of stadium that assumes it will host a final, the sort that thinks other venues wouldn’t want all that pressure and attention anyway.

The English FA will pull rank here and that is understandable, to an extent. After all, Wembley can call upon history and experience, the site having hosted three European Championship finals before: one at the old Wembley in 1996, and both the men’s and women’s finals at the new Wembley in 2021 and 2022.

It is only now, despite knowing for months, that those involved in the United Kingdom-Ireland Euro 2028 bid are actually excitedly talking about the reality of tournament football returning to these islands. There was a sense from inside the campaign of not wishing to tempt fate, given how previous staging attempts had gone. That is despite the fact this has been a fait accompli for well over a year.

It is also why, even though this victory is obviously something to be celebrated, this does provoke bigger questions over current football politics. That’s especially the case given the reforms and the controversies from the 2018 and 2022 bidding process.

Euro 2028 is instead one of potentially five consecutive European Championships and World Cups that will have had virtually no competition in the bidding processes.

The future of soccer’s European Championship for the next decade was decided Tuesday — the United Kingdom and Ireland will host in 2028 and an unusual Italy-Turkey co-hosting plan was picked for 2032.

There were no losers when the executive committee of European soccer governing body UEFA finally approved the double hosting award that was inevitable after former bid rivals Italy and Turkey united under one flag of convenience in July.

That deal took Turkey out of the Euro 2028 contest where the team of five neighboring UEFA member federations — England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Ireland — was long favored to win.