Amex Stadium to host Euro 2021
International tournament football will come to Brighton and Hove in the summer of 2021 with the Amex Stadium set to host the Women’s European Championship.
The FA was the only bidder for the tournament after a rival bid from Austria and Hungary never materialised. That meant that all UEFA had to do was rubber stamp England’s hosting of it, which they have now done.
Eight venues are set to host the tournament, with the final taking place at Wembley. The Amex will play it’s part alongside Southampton‘s St Mary’s, Nottingham Forest’s City Ground, stadium:mk, Sheffiled United’s Bramall Lane, the New York Stadium in Rotherham, Brentford’s new ground, the Abax Stadium which to you and me is London Road and Manchester City‘s Accademy Stadium, home of the Citizen’s Women’s team.
The original bid submitted in April had seven grounds including Meadow Lane listed, but Notts County’s home has since been cut from the bid having failed to meet UEFA requirements. The FA were asked to add one more to the hosting party, which saw the late additions of St Mary’s and the City Ground.
Before Southampton’s inclusion, the Amex was comfortably the best ground behind Wembley on the list which would have made it a strong candidate for one of the semi finals. With another Premier League venue now involved, that might be less likely although you’d struggle to find anybody other than the most rose-tinted of Saints fans who would argue their home is better than the Albion’s.
The Amex has hosted women’s international football previously. Mark Sampson took charge of the Lionesses for the first time as they hammered Montenegro 9-0 in April 2014.
The lovely Toni Duggan scored a hat-trick that day along with goals from Eniola Aluko, Jill Scott, Karen Carney, Demi Stokes and Natasha Dowie. There was even an own goal for good measure.
The game drew a crowd of 8,908 to the stadium. All the while, there were several hundred of us who’d traipsed all the way to Barnsley for the most boring 0-0 imaginable, wishing we’d stayed at home to cheer on England.
The Lionesses will now qualify for the tournament automatically as hosts, and they should enter as one of the favourites having reached the last four of both the 2015 World Cup held in Canada and the most recent edition of the Euros, held in 2017 in the Netherlands.
That success has seen a huge growth in the popularity of women’s football – and not just among volunteers on a local Brighton-based radio station who are desperate to prove their left-wing credentials.
Over 45,000 watched Chelsea lift the FA Cup at Wembley in May and four million tuned in for the Lionesses Euro 2017 semi final defeat against the Dutch.
The Albion’s Women side are also on the rise. They’re competing against the best players in the country in the top tier of the Super League for the first time this season and sit just outside the relegation zone.
They’re coached by former England boss Hope Powell and with Ellie Brazil and Chloe Peplow both current members of the England Under 21 squad, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that there could even be Seagulls in the Lionesses squad for the tournament in three years time.
A Brighton player scoring the winning goal for England in a European Championship semi final at the Amex? That’s a dream, right there.
