A plan to stage the 2020 European soccer championships across the entire continent instead of one or two countries enjoys wide support among national federations, Germany's football association (DFB) said on Tuesday, Nov 27.

Ahead of two days of meetings in Brussels with European soccer's governing body UEFA, DFB General Secretary Helmut Sandrock said they were initially surprised by UEFA boss Michel Platini's concept.

The proposal, yet to be ratified by the UEFA executive committee, could see 12 countries hosting an expanded tournament involving 24 teams, up from the current 16.

"We were surprised when we first heard the idea," Sandrock said before departing for Brussels.

"But I myself had discussions to learn more about this idea and we know that there have been two strategy discussions with national federations already and there is a lot of support for such a Euro tournament," Sandrock said.

"We discussed this idea at the DFB as we had supported the Turkey 2020 bid but we know there is wide support from our partners in Europe (for Platini's pan)."

Turkey has expressed a wish to stage the tournament on a conventional, single-country basis but their bid will be dropped if Istanbul is awarded the Olympics in the same year, Reuters reported.