EURO 2021

Where even soccer is politics, infrastructure improvements have fallen behind. KIEV — In Ukraine, soccer is simply politics pursued through other means. The vicious and sometimes petty power struggle at the highest reaches of the country’s government has spilled over to its sports fields. Two years ago, UEFA, Europe’s governing soccer body, awarded Ukraine and its Slavic neighbor Poland the prestigious designation as co-hosts of the European soccer championships in 2012. The European championship, held every four years, is the largest international soccer tournament after the World Cup and one […]

Poles are running ahead of schedule with their preparations. Poland is ahead of schedule in its preparations for the 2012 European Soccer Championship. The UEFA commission recently visited Poland and Ukraine to assess the situation and approved the progress made in the Polish cities of Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk, and Wroclaw, which will host the soccer games. Poland hopes that Ukraine will keep to its schedule and will clear the backlog, otherwise it will be denied the right to host the soccer championship. Our Euro-2012 host cities are Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv, […]

During meeting today in Bucharest, the UEFA Executive Committee examined and discussed the state of infrastructure preparations for the final tournament of the 2012 UEFA European Championship due to be held in Poland and Ukraine from 9 June until 1 July 2012. After careful consideration of the evaluation reports prepared by the UEFA administration and consultation with the host associations, the UEFA Executive Committee took the following decisions concerning the selection of host cities for UEFA EURO 2012™: Host cities in Poland Progress has been made in the preparation of […]

Four Polish cities picked; Krakow not on the list After months of waiting and speculation in media from Gazeta Wyborcza to The Guardian, UEFA has finally announced the list of host cities for the 2012 European Championships. At a press conference this morning in Bucharest, UEFA President Michel Platini announced the final choices for host cities for Euro 2012: for Poland, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Wrocław, and Poznań are confirmed. Unfortunately for Krakow, this means the city, along with Chorzów, is now out of the running. Krakow’s mayor took an optimistic tone […]

The Ukrainian cities of Kiev and Donetsk are guaranteed to be chosen as hosts for the 2012 European soccer championship and three others discover on Wednesday if they will join them. UEFA’s Executive Committee meets in Bucharest this week to chose the venues for the tournament being co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland. The cities of Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Odessa all hope to be chosen although the latter two are on Ukraine’s reserve list of venues. Odessa, a port and resort town on the Black Sea Coast, is unlikely to […]

Uefa will announce the list of host cities for Euro 2012 next week and everyone wants to keep hold of their slice of the financial pie. These are a big few days for Ukrainian football. On Thursday, they will find out who will be their first representatives in a European final for 23 years, as Shakhtar Donetsk host Dynamo Kyiv in the second leg of their Uefa Cup semi-final, a 1-1 first-leg draw having seemingly handed Shakhtar the initiative, even if they were second best for much of the game. […]

After reports during Euro 2008 that Poland and Ukraine may lose Euro 2012 Michel Platini’s visits to both countries were treated as enormously important by organizers. Platini didn’t say much while in Poland, which can be read as a good sign, whereas he criticised Ukraine severely when meeting local officials. As a result, UEFA now demands that Poland prepares an allternate plan to organize the tournament all by itself. Ukraine has no problems with stadiums, which are almost finished in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk. One stadium is to be built […]

After reports during Euro 2008 that Poland and Ukraine may lose Euro 2012 Michel Platini’s visits to both countries were treated as enormously important by organizers. Platini didn’t say much while in Poland, which can be read as a good sign, whereas he criticised Ukraine severely when meeting local officials. As a result, UEFA now demands that Poland prepares an allternate plan to organize the tournament all by itself. Ukraine has no problems with stadiums, which are almost finished in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk. One stadium is to be built […]

The euphoria which gripped Ukraine and Poland on April 18, 2007 after winning the right to host Europe’s football championship, EURO 2012, has come to nothing. A year after the triumphal hugs and kisses, the two countries’ preparations have progressed so poorly that Football Federation of Ukraine President Hryhoriy Surkis, and Football Federation of Poland President Michal Listkiewicz had to explain the situation in detail to the Union of European Football Association’s executive committee in last March. The National Agency to Prepare and Host EURO 2012 was established to coordinate […]

A match-fixing scandal and a complacent attitude towards construction may undermine Poland’s ability to co-host Euro 2012 There is a rumour going around that Poland-Ukraine was awarded the rights to host Euro 2012 only by embittered Lennart Johansson acolytes looking to screw up Michel Platini’s reign. It is, almost certainly, nothing more than mischief-making, and yet there was a strange pause as Platini opened the envelope that could, with hindsight, be construed as horror. On that momentous day in Cardiff, west seemed to offer an arm to east and talk […]