Russia has filed a late bid to host the 2012 European Championship, just beating Monday's deadline set by European soccer's governing body UEFA.
The Russians, who made an unsuccessful attempt to stage the 2008 tournament, waited until the last minute before finally deciding to go ahead with their plan.
"We didn't want to make fools of ourselves by submitting an unprepared bid like we had the last time," outgoing Russian soccer chief Vyacheslav Koloskov told Reuters.
"We needed government guarantees for our bid to have any chance of success and I think we now have a strong case."
Russia will face tough competition from Italy and Greece as well as joint bids from Poland/Ukraine and Hungary/Croatia.
Koloskov said that unlike the previous bid, which existed "only on paper", this time Russia will have a number of modern stadiums ready by 2008.
"We have concrete plans to build soccer stadiums not only in Moscow or St Petersburg but also in several other Russian cities," he said.
Koloskov also dismissed fears that the country's bid for a major soccer tournament in 2012 could harm Moscow's hopes of staging the Olympics in the same year.
"I think it will only increase our chances because no matter how the Olympic vote would go Moscow is already spending lots of money on its infrastructure, roads, hotels, etc and it could only help our bid as well," he said.
UEFA said it would draw up a shortlist of three candidates in November before announcing the host country in December 2006.
Source: Reuters
31.01.2005