By DPA
Hamburg : The 2010 Champions League final will be played at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeu while the northern German city of Hamburg will host the UEFA Cup final that year.
UEFA’s executive committee took this decision in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, Friday. It, however, postponed a decision on the host venues for the 2011 finals to allow members more time to consider the bids.
Among candidates for the Champions League final are Munich, Berlin, Valencia and Wembley, London.
Arsenal Stadium in London, the Arena AufSchalke in Gelsenkirchen, Olimpico de Montjuic in Barcelona, Lansdowne Road, Dublin, and the National stadium in Bucharest also made bids for the UEFA Cup final.
The two 2010 finals will be at the home stadiums of Real Madrid and SV Hamburg.
They were chosen on the basis of capacity, facilities, accommodation and security among other considerations, UEFA said.
“We are delighted. SV Hamburg and the whole of Hamburg will be a great host just as we were at the World Cup,” SV Hamburg president Bernd Hoffman said.
The Santiago Bernabeu, with a capacity of 71,569, will be hosting a fourth European Cup or Champions League final, following the finals of 1957, 1969 and 1980.
Bernabeu was also the stage for the 1982 World Cup final and the final of the 1964 European Championships.
The 51,680-seater Hamburg Arena opened in 2000 on the site of Hamburg’s old Volksparkstadion and was the venue for matches at the 2006 World Cup.
The Volksparkstadion also hosted group stage games at the 1974 World Cup finals and the semi-final of the 1988 European Championship, where West Germany lost 2-1 to the Netherlands.
Although never a neutral host for a European final, Swedish side IFK Goteborg clinched the 1981-82 UEFA Cup title after beating SV Hamburg 3-0 in the second leg of the final at the Volksparkstadion.
This year’s Champions League final takes place at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow with Rome’s Stadio Olimpico the stage for the 2009 final.
The City of Manchester Stadium is venue for this year’s UEFA Cup final, which in 2009 will be staged at the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium in Istanbul.
The executive committee confirmed that the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Super Cup games would continue to be played at the Stade Louis II in Monaco.
The 2010 European Under-19 Championship was awarded to France, and the same year’s Under-17 event to Liechtenstein, while Nyon will host the 2009 UEFA European Women’s Under-17 Championship.