Poland, Ukraine shock 2012 hosts

POLAND and Ukraine will host the European soccer championship in 2012 after UEFA awarded them the tournament ahead of Italy and another joint bid from Hungary and Croatia yesterday.

Despite the Italian game being blighted by match fixing and crowd violence in the last year, Italy were slight favourites to be awarded the finals for the third time in their history.

Instead, UEFA have gambled by awarding the second largest soccer tournament in the world to two countries who have never previously hosted anything of this magnitude.

Their bid appeared to have been undermined on two fronts.

FIFA had threatened to ban Poland from international competition after its government removed the country’s football association from power in January following a scandal involving corrupt referees.

The unstable political climate in Ukraine, with a presidential decree having dissolved parliament and called for a new election next month, had also raised doubts.

Italian delegates at Cardiff’s City Hall, where UEFA president Michel Platini announced the decision, were stunned, while the Polish and Ukrainian officials leapt and hugged each other in rapturous delight.

“There are 85 million people now waiting for this big football event,” Polish FA chairman Michal Listkiewicz said. “The friendship between our nations has a very long history. This big tournament will be an important milestone in the history of our two Slavic nations.”

Hryhory Surkis, the president of the Ukraine FA said: “This is the greatest result in the history of our football.”

The 12 eligible voting UEFA executive committee members gave eight votes to Poland and Ukraine, four to Italy and none to Hungary and Croatia.

“I’m not surprised this has happened,” the president of the Italian Football League, Antonio Matarrese, told Italy’s La7 television station from Cardiff.

“We are coming out of one of the most terrible tragedies in the history of Italian football,” he added, referring to the death of police inspector Filippo Raciti outside Catania’s Massimino stadium in February.

Aljosa Asanovic, a former Croatia player and assistant to the national team coach, told Croatian news agency hina: “It’s difficult to say what caused this decision, but one should bear in mind that Hryhory Surkis is a member of the UEFA executive board. He could not vote, but probably had a considerable influence on the final decision.”

Ukrainian government ministers broke into applause as the announcement was made during a cabinet meeting while the Warsaw stock exchange reacted by reaching a record high.

“It’s a beautiful day for Polish sport,” Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in Brussels as he met with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Sergei Bubka, the former world and Olympic pole vault champion and now president of the Ukraine Olympic Committee and an IOC member added: “This is a remarkable achievement for our country. It is an astonishing success.”

Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the government would within 10 days draw up a programme to prepare for the championship.

“In terms of the economy, Ukraine will come out a winner. It will provide a serious boost for developing our infrastructure and tourism,” he said.

Poland’s former president, Solidarity leader and Noble Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa, also acclaimed the result.

“I’m extremely happy. I was personally involved in trying to help Poland and Ukraine organise the Euro tournament. I’ve put my authority at stake and I admit that I gave a 50-50 chance of Poland winning,” said Mr Walesa.

The four Polish cities are Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan and Wroclaw, while Kiev, Donetsk, Lvov and Dnipropetrovsk will stage games in Ukraine.