Cardiff looks set to "agonisingly miss out on becoming a host city for Euro 2020, compounding the heartbreak of Wales failing to qualify for next year's World Cup in Russia," according to Andrew Warshaw of the London DAILY MAIL. UEFA's exec committee is "ready to pick Stockholm over the principality" when it votes on Thursday to replace Brussels' Eurostadium as one of the 13 venues for the tournament. The Belgian capital was one of the original cities chosen but building work on a new 60,000-seat arena has been "fraught with politics" and UEFA has "run out of patience." Welsh FA officials "lobbied virtually every" exec committee member, including UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, but "it seems their case will be thrown out despite having successfully hosted" the Champions League final. UEFA "bigwigs" are understood to have decided that with Wembley, Glasgow and Dublin already staging games, the tournament "would be top-heavy with British and Irish venues if Cardiff is thrown into the mix." By contrast, Copenhagen is the "only definite Scandinavian representative so far." This has "privately infuriated Welsh officials who believe they submitted a far stronger technical bid than the Swedes," whose stadium will hold 25,000 fewer spectators. A high-ranking Welsh official said, "It would be a shame if Thursday turns out to be a political and geographical decision" (DAILY MAIL, 12/2).
