GENEVA: The Swiss Football Association has become the latest national governing body to declare its bidding intentions for UEFA Euro 2020 by putting forward Basel as its host city ahead of this week’s deadline for applications.

Basel’s St Jakob Park stadium hosted matches at the 1954 World Cup and more recently at Euro 2008, which Switzerland co-hosted with Austria. However, the SFV has conceded that Switzerland’s status as a recent European Championships host may count against it, adding that it will consider its options once the other candidate cities are made public by UEFA.

St Jakob currently has a capacity of 38,000, making it eligible for a package of three group stage games plus a last-16 knockout match. UEFA confirmed in January that Euro 2020 will be staged across 13 different cities in Europe as part of a major restructuring of the quadrennial national team tournament.

The ‘Euro for Europe’ vision foresees that matches will be split into 13 different packages, with 12 ordinary packages including three group matches and one knockout round (round of 16 or quarter-finals), and one package for the semi-finals and the final.

Countries have until Thursday to submit Euro 2020 bids to UEFA with European football’s governing body set to formally verify applications on September 20 before making a decision over host cities in September 2014.

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