Mark Bullingham says the UK and Ireland will be ready to host the ‘biggest and most successful EUROs ever’ in 2028, following Tuesday’s decision to award the tournament to a unique five-Association partnership.
The FA CEO was at UEFA’s headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland on Tuesday along with colleagues from the Welsh, Scottish, Northern Ireland and Irish federations to present their bid to host UEFA EURO 2028 across the five nations.
And after the European governing body’s ExCo ratified the decision to award the EURO to UK and Ireland, Bullingham spoke about the news.
"It's been three years of hard work to get to this point, and it's fantastic for us both as a country and for all five nations,” he said.
"We worked really hard to put together a strong bid and that's probably the reason we were unopposed in the end, but we worked very hard today on the bid and made sure we had a solid presentation which showed how we're going to run the tournament, take it forward and run what we think will be one of the biggest and most successful EUROs ever.
"It's a really good partnership [with the other nations] from our point of view, it's brilliant those nations are going to get a significant proportion of games, particularly if they end up with their own home games, it'll really excite the countries.”
Bullingham also revealed that the plan will be for England to play for their place at the tournament via the usual qualifying campaign, which would start in 2026.
And the dream scenario would be for all five nations to seal their place in the Finals.
"The last EURO had 12 hosts so there has been precedents where there's been multiple hosts before, but the way we're looking at it is that all five countries will go into qualifying and we'd love it if all five qualified through that route.
"It is better to play in a tournament that matters with competitive games and we're looking forward to that, that's always been part of our discussions with the other countries and with UEFA. We think that's the right thing to do
"There will be a couple of safety net places if countries don't come through that, but from our point of view, it will be great to be involved in qualifying and obviously want to get everyone there.”
