Baku Moves Foward, Azerbaijan Plans Joint Bid to Host UEFA Euro 2020

Reporting from SportAccord in Quebec City, Canada

Quebec - Mere hours after Baku was left off of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) short list for the 2020 Olympic Games, Azerbaijan has notifed FIFA that they plan to join forces with Georgia in a bid for the Euro 2020 Championships.

Earlier GamesBids.com learned from a source at SportAccord in Quebec who is close to the situation that the two bidding nations were working for the past several hours after Baku's Olympic elimination to iron out the details of an agreement.  On Thursday at the FIFA Congress in Budapest the President of the Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan, Rovnag Abdullayev told reporters about Azerbaijan's new plans.

After their elimination from the Olympic bid Wednesday, team members vowed that they will return to bid for the 2024 Games.

There was already discussion about the joint bid prior to an UEFA deadline earlier this month but Azerbaijan could not officially announce participation while Baku was still a 2020 Olympic Games contender.  Istanbul was accepted to the IOC short list while Turkey remains one of the bidders for Euro 2020 - and the two bids have been under fire for a lack of national focus.

A third joint bid from Scotland, Wales and Ireland will also compete to host Euro 2020.