By Andrew Warshaw
December 12 – For the first time, UEFA are to employ a formal bidding process for the venues of the Champions League and Europa League finals following accusations of a purely ad hoc procedure in the past.
While the venues for the World Cup and European Championship finals have always gone to a vote, cities staging the climax of UEFA’s two club competitions have until now been awarded as a fait accompli behind closed doors by UEFA’s executive committee.
Not any more.
After announcing that Lyon will stage the 2018 Europa League final, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin made it clear that a tender process will take place thereafter.
“There will be no more political favours concerning (the) decision of who will host the finals of Champions League and Europa League, there will be a clear bidding procedure from now on,” Ceferin said.
Last week’s UEFA executive committee meeting also threw up the prospect of Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s sporting supremo who is back under the spotlight over how much he knew about the country’s doping scandal, controversially gaining a place on the new-look FIFA Council.
Mutko, deputy prime minister after being promoted from Sports minister, is president of both the Russian FA and the 2018 World Cup organising committee and has been a prominent member of UEFA’s executive committee.
He is standing in April as one of Europe’s slots on the FIFA Council along with Hungarian Sandor Csanyi, also a current UEFA exco member, Iceland federation president Geir Thorsteinsson, Montenegro’s Dejan Savicevic and Cyprus FA boss Costakis Koutsokoumnis. Three of the positions have been made vacant by the fact that stalwarts Michel D’Hooghe (Belgium), Senes Erzik (Turkey) and Marios Lefkaritis (Cyprus) are all stepping down. The vote is April 5 at the UEFA congress in Helsinki.
Under FIFA’s reforms all new or re-appointed members have to undergo an integrity check, whatever their standing. Mutko has been a member of FIFA’s and UEFA’s inner circle for several years but the World Anti-Doping Agency has called on FIFA’s ethics committee to look into his possible role in connection with the Russian doping scandal.
“We have written to FIFA with the five potential candidates and the procedure is FIFA has to go through this eligibility check,” said UEFA legal director Alasdair Bell who acknowledged that the fresh doping revelations “appears to contain some serious allegations” though he noted that “these are contested” by the Russian authorities.
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