The UK and Republic of Ireland have submitted their final list of stadiums as part of their bid to host Euro 2028, but Anfield was never set to be on it.
A joint UK-Ireland bid has been made to host Euro 2028, with their main rivals for the tournament being Turkiye after a series of planned bids fell through.
Those included Portugal and Spain, six Scandinavian countries, Italy, and Russia, the latter of which was deemed ineligible following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Wednesday brought the deadline for final dossiers to be submitted to UEFA, which features the final list of stadiums chosen to host games at a prospective tournament.
After an initial 14-stadium shortlist, the UK and Ireland bid has cut that down to 10, with Old Trafford, the London Stadium, the Stadium of Light and Dublin’s Croke Park all omitted.
The stadiums chosen are: Wembley, the Principality Stadium, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the Etihad, St James’ Park, Villa Park, Hampden Park, the Aviva Stadium, Casement Park and Everton‘s new stadium on Bramley-Moore Dock.
Notable in its absence from both the preliminary list and the final submission is Anfield.
However, Liverpool’s stadium was never eligible for consideration due to the size of the pitch not meeting UEFA regulations.
UEFA’s guidelines stipulate that for a stadium to host tournament games, “the field of play must have the standard dimensions of 105m by 68m.”
Anfield’s pitch is 101m long, which falls short of UEFA’s parameters.
This is despite the stadium soon becoming the fifth-largest in England when the expansion of the Anfield Road Stand is complete, bringing its capacity over 61,000.
It would, therefore, be the fourth-largest among the list of stadiums submitted by the UK and Ireland, behind only Wembley (90,652), Cardiff’s Principality Stadium (73,952) and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadum (62,322).
Anfield is unable to host Champions League or Europa League finals for the same reason, while it was also not in the running for Euro 2018.