24 September 2018•Update: 24 September 2018
By Fatih Erel
ISTANBUL
The UEFA Executive Committee will make a choice Thursday between Turkey and German to host 2024 UEFA European Football Championship (EURO 2024).
The committee will meet in Nyon, Switzerland, on Sept. 27 to choose the EURO 2024 host between two candidates: Turkey and Germany.
UEFA may well vote for a change and deservedly select Turkey to host the tournament, according to a member of UEFA’s Executive Committee, Servet Yardimci.
In April, the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) and the German Football Association (DFB) submitted their official bids to host the event.
Turkey is hoping to host the 2024 UEFA European Football Championship for the first time after bidding for four consecutive tournaments.
"We hope UEFA will vote for a change this tournament go to a new nation like Turkey so that we can showcase to the world how successfully Turkey can deliver this tournament," Yardimci told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.
"Now must be the time for Turkey to have the privilege of hosting this major tournament rather than it going to traditional European countries," he said.
Turkey's UEFA EURO 2024 motto is "Share together," showing it hopes to bring people closer with their passion for football, the country's football body said.
German football fans protest country's bid
During matches last week, German football fans protested the country’s nomination to host EURO 2024 by holding up banners and chanting.
At Saturday’s match between Augsburg and Werder Bremen, fans chanted against Germany’s EURO 2024 nomination.
Fans of Dynamo Dresden, a Bundesliga second-league team, unfurled a banner during the match with Darmstadt, saying: “We don’t need tournaments bought with euros. We need change.”
On Friday, Stuttgart fans also showed off a banner reading: “United by Money: Corrupt in the center of Europe,” mocking Germany’s EURO 2024 bid slogan, "United By Football: Together in the center of Europe".
Racism and bribery
On Friday, the UEFA issued an evaluation of Turkey And Germany's Euro 2024 bids.
The report included both candidates' stadiums, as well as the political, social and environmental aspects, not to mention issues pertaining to security services, mobility, accommodation, and training facilities.
After the report was published, Turkish Football Federation President Yildirim Demiroren said: "We are prepared to host a spectacular tournament thanks to the investments made by our state to football in recent years."
In recent years, the DFB -- which competes against the TFF to host EURO 2024 -- has been rocked by fraud and racism allegations.
In 2015, German weekly Der Spiegel claimed that Germany paid €6.7 million (around $7.8 million) in bribes to secure the 2006 World Cup. Wolfgang Niersbach, the then head of DFB, was forced to resign over bribery allegations, and FIFA banned him from football for a year.
Reinhard Grindel, the DFB’s current head, has been tarnished by racism allegations.
In July, Turkish-German footballer Mesut Ozil quit the national team, citing racial discrimination.
Ozil also said that Grindel failed to support him when he receives hate mails, threatening phone calls, and racist comments on social media. The DFB head later admitted that he had not been supportive enough.
According to the UEFA evaluation report, four out of ten candidate host cities in Germany are not members of the European Coalition of Cities against Racism.
