Pot 1 for Euro 2021 Qualification Draw

[GordonS]

More good news.

Scotland are 9th in the UEFA Ranking published this month. There will be 9 groups (hosts (England)  qualify automatically, top and 3 best 2nd place qualify, remaining 6 play-off for final 3 places) so Scotland will be a top seed for the Euro 2021 qualifiers, to be drawn next month.

England will be hosts as no-one else bid. This is probably the biggest football tournament Scotland could host on its own, so it's a shame the SFA didn't enter a bid.

[AsimButtHitsASix]

16 minutes ago, GordonS said:

This is probably the biggest football tournament Scotland could host on its own, so it's a shame the SFA didn't enter a bid.

14 all seater football stadiums with capacity over 10,000 (which seems to be the cut off?) plus Murrayfield available. Good spread of them as well in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Perth, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, Motherwell and Dunfermline. Can't think of a reason why we wouldn't table a bid.

[craigkillie]

We bid for the 2017 event but lost out to the Netherlands. It's possible that we knew that the English FA were going to bid and either a) decided that we wouldn't be able to beat them or b) agreed not to go up against them in order to secure some favour down the line.

[GordonS]

3 hours ago, craigkillie said:

We bid for the 2017 event but lost out to the Netherlands. It's possible that we knew that the English FA were going to bid and either a) decided that we wouldn't be able to beat them or b) agreed not to go up against them in order to secure some favour down the line.

Yeah, I hope there's a good reason like that. The FA are out in the cold with FIFA, but they still seem popular with UEFA, so a quid pro quo might get the job done. We're hosting the Women's U19 European Championship next summer (first time we've hosted any tournament since 1990 IIRC) so maybe that's part of the process too.