EURO 2008: The Republic of Ireland and Scotland have been told they may have to win over just five of European football's power brokers to land the European Championship in 2008. One vote is already in the bag as England have promised they will back their neighbours ahead of six other sets of rivals.
That leaves eight votes up for grabs and three belong to a trio of smaller nations - Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus.
The Irish and Scots, who made their bid presentation at UEFA headquarters on Tuesday, still regard themselves as second favourites behind a joint Switzerland-Austria venture. But their hopes of landing the tournament were given a significant boost when UEFA secretary Gerhard Aigner promised the voting system would be made as objective as possible. UEFA's executive committee, comprising 14 members, will make the decision in December.
Five of them are from nations who are also bidding and the Scots had assumed each delegate would be able to vote for their own nation's bid. But the Irish and Scottish bid spokesman Simon Lyons revealed they believe this is now not the case.
He said: "Gerhard Aigner has promised the voting would be objective. He said any person on the executive committee whose country is a bidder will stand down. Up to last night we believed the Scandinavian bid would automatically get three votes from Sweden, Norway and Iceland. It is very good news. We don't have a seat on the top table so that brings the voting down to nine."
A poll of five votes would give the joint bidders a simple majority. The nine non-bidding nations with places on the committee are England, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Iceland, Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg.
It is expected Iceland will side with their Scandinavian neighbours but Geoff Thompson of the English FA has promised to side with the Irish and Scots. The other bidders are joint efforts from Bosnia and Croatia, Greece and Turkey while Hungary and Russia have made one-nation bids.
The executive committee members with vested interests are Sweden, in the shape of UEFA president Lennart Johansson, Norway, Russia, Turkey and Switzerland. Lyons added: "Austria and Switzerland are still the favourites but we are very close to them at the moment."
Scottish FA chief executive David Taylor donned a kilt to make the presentation at UEFA headquarters in Nyon on the banks of Lake Geneva. Lyons said: "It went very well and was a different approach to many of our rivals, who were looking to the bonhomie of UEFA by saying that if they gave them the championships it would save their country.
"Our pitch was that we could deliver a great tournament. We have got big stadia, lots of fans, great countries to visit, a great infrastructure and total government backing. And we have proved we can run big events, from the Champions League in Glasgow to St Patrick's Day parades in Ireland."
Meanwhile, Scotland have confirmed they will play a friendly against Ireland next season. Mick McCarthy's team will visit Scotland on April 30th with Hampden Park the likely venue, although this is still to be confirmed.
The Scots are next in action on August 21st when Denmark, who like the Republic bowed out of the World Cup in the second round, arrive at Hampden.
Scotland have Euro 2004 qualifiers with the Faroe Islands, Iceland (twice) and Lithuania between those two fixtures. But manager Berti Vogts is keen to make every available use of the international fixture calendar and has lined up three more friendlies.
Two home matches have been scheduled for October 15th in Edinburgh against the United States or Canada and as-yet-unconfirmed opponents on November 20th. An away game has been scheduled for February 12th with a trip to Brazil mooted.
The under-21 side will face Denmark at Hamilton the day before their senior counterparts meet and the Scots hope to have a full-time coach by then with former Germany international Rainer Bonhof already in talks. A friendly with Israel under-21s has been provisionally scheduled for September 4th.
