Sweden and Denmark team up to bid for Euro 2029 in women's soccer

Thu, Feb 8, 2024
Soccer News (AP)

PARIS (AP) - Denmark and Sweden will bid to host the 2029 Women's European Championship, the two federations said Thursday.

They are no longer with their Nordic neighbors Norway and Finland after their four-nation bid for the 2025 edition lost out to Switzerland in a final round of voting by UEFA's executive committee last year.

The tournament of 16 teams and 31 games requires up to eight stadiums to host.

Swedish and Danish soccer leaders announced their bid project in Paris after the annual meeting of UEFA where both had supported its president Aleksander Ceferin in a potentially controversial vote on extending term limits.

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Earlier at the UEFA congress, Norway was one of three "no" votes, with England and Iceland, in an attempt to separate the term-limit issue from a bloc vote on a wider package of statutes changes.

Ceferin got all his proposed legal changes approved, then announced at a post-meeting news conference he will not be a candidate in 2027 in an election that could have stretched his presidency to 15 years.

Ceferin's senior vice president at UEFA is Karl-Erik Nilsson of Sweden. Jesper Moller of Denmark also is a UEFA executive committee member and chairs its legal committee which steered the changes.

Norway is one of the few federations in world soccer to have a female president, Lise Klaveness, who is a former national-team player.

Norway is a two-time European champion in women's soccer, and Sweden won the first edition in 1984. Denmark never won the title.

UEFA has yet to open formal bidding for the Women's Euro 2029.

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