Jean-Pierre Escalettes, the president of the French Football Federation (FFF), dismissed the idea of the country's Sports Minister Bernard Laporte that there should be "joint organisation" with the Italians.

 

Escalettes believes France, who hosted a successful World Cup in 1998 with the final at the specially built Stade de France (pictured), have the ability to run a successful tournament on their own.

 

He said: "We are going there to win and we are going for it alone.

 

"France, a great football nation with 2,500,000 registered footballers, must go it alone in this conquest.

 

"There is a common desire of everyone in football [in France] to do it and do it alone.

 

"There has been no official contact with the Italian federation."

 

Potential candidates have until next Monday to officially inform UEFA, European football's governing body, of their decision to submit an application.

 

UEFA will announce on April 1 if those countries who have declared an interest in being hosts can go forward with their bids.

 

The winner will be chosen in May next year.

 

Sweden and Norway have already announced plans to make a joint bid for the Euros, and Laporte told L'Equipe that France and Italy could do likewise.

 

He said: "It's the federation who will decide and it will do what it wants.

 

"But me, I prefer to share and to win.

 

"I hear people speaking of this idea of a joint organisation, and we will talk about it during our meeting [with his Italian counterparts].

 

"The ideal thing would be to go it alone.

 

"But if an association is the price to pay and if we can't do anything else, I would not put any obstacles in front of it."

 

Laporte changed tack today, saying France "would of course go it alone".

 

He said: "If France aren't capable of organising Euro 2016 alone, it would be a concern for us."

 

Like France, Italy have successfully hosted a recent World Cup in 1990 - but they lost out to Poland and Ukraine for the right to host Euro 2012.

 

Scotland and Wales announced earlier this week that they had dropped plans to submit a joint bid because of the current economic crisis the UEFA's decision to extend the competition from 16 teams to 24.