Norway and Sweden jointly bid for Euro 2016

Sweden’s Football Association has announced it intends to team up with Norway to make a joint bid to host the European Championship in 2016. The European continent’s premier football competition has only been held in Scandinavia once, when Sweden hosted the event in 1992.

The Local newspaper reports that back in 1992, only eight national teams from Europe were involved in the finals. But in 2016, there will be 24 teams in the final showdown. Lars-Ake Lagrell, the president of the Swedish Football Federation, stated “Neither Norway nor Sweden can organise by themselves these days a European football championships, so it is only natural that we join our forces.”

“We work very well together and have made solid preparations for our statement of interest. During the time we’ve been working together we’ve become more and more enthusiastic about the idea of holding a football celebration for the ages on home turf in 2016,” Lagrell and his Norwegian counterpart Sondre Kafjord said in a joint statement.

France has also announced its desire to host Euro 2016, and Scotland looks likely to offer a bid to co-host the event with Northern Ireland and Wales. Euro 2012 will be jointly hosted by Ukraine and Poland.