Home comfort for Southgate

Euro 2020 matches moved from Brussels to Wembley

England could play their entire 2020 European Championship campaign at Wembley – and could even face Scotland in the group stages – after the home of football was awarded four more fixtures at the tournament.

Having already been handed the semi-finals and finals of what had been conceived as a pan-european event, the national stadium was controversially reallocated games originally intended to be played in Brussels.

Wembley will now stage an additional three group matches and a last-16 tie to take its total share to seven – more than during Euro ’96.

And England could play all four of those fixtures at the stadium – as well as any semi-final or final – in a tournament bearing more and more of a resemblance to that when football ‘came home’.

Those similarities will intensify if both they and Scotland qualify, which would ensure a repeat of their iconic Euro ’96 clash – their first and only meeting at a major finals. That was after Uefa yesterday announced Wembley and Hampden would stage matches in the same group – Group D – having previously confirmed each of the 12 host countries would play at least two group games at home provided they reach the tournament.

Those nations’ third group games, meanwhile, will either also be played at home or otherwise at the second venue holding games in the same group. That means if England play only two group matches at Wembley, the other will be at Hampden – and vice versa for Scotland. The only fixture England definitely could not play at home would be any quarter-final, with that round staged in Munich, St Petersburg, Baku and Rome – which was also awarded the opening match of the tournament yesterday.

Belgian capital Brussels was stripped of its four matches over delays to the project to build a new 60,000-capacity stadium in the city. Cardiff’s Principality Stadium and Stockholm’s Friends Arena were competing to pick up the reallocated games, having missed out when they were originally awarded three years ago, before receiving the consolation prize of last season’s respective Champions League and Europa League finals.

Meanwhile, Uefa also announced the draw seedings for the new Nations League yesterday, which will see England play one of Germany, Spain, Portugal or Belgium, and one of Poland, Iceland, Croatia and Holland.