Euro 2012

Sunday’s draw for the Euro 2012 Championships qualifying competition was finished.

Each team in the qualifying groups will play one another on a home and away basis, with matches taking place up to October 2011.

The nine group winners and the best runner-up qualify directly for the final tournament. The eight remaining runners-up will contest two-legged play-offs to decide who gets the four remaining places.

Euro 2012 qualifying draw:

Group A: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan
Group B: Russia, Slovakia, Republic of Ireland, Macedonia, Armenia, Andorra
Group C: Italy, Serbia, Northern Ireland, Slovenia, Estonia, Faroe Islands
Group D: France, Romania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Belarus, Albania, Luxembourg
Group E: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Moldova, San Marino
Group F: Croatia, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Georgia, Malta
Group G: England, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Wales, Montenegro
Group H: Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Cyprus, Iceland
Group I: Spain, Czech Republic, Scotland, Lithuania, Liechtenstein

Preparations for the Euro 2012 football tournament in Poland and Ukraine are well on track, the ruling body UEFA said on Friday with nine days left until the qualifying group draw.

The February 7 draw in Warsaw is the first big event around the tournament which created various problems in the early stages after the two Eastern European nations were elected hosts in 2007.

‘Preparations for Euro 2012 are going well,’ UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino told the body’s website after an executive board meeting on Thursday in Malta.

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Platini has made it clear that UEFA’s decision to award Euro 2012 to Poland and Ukraine was far from a safe bet…

The focus of the football world is at the African Nations Cup at the moment and will be shifted to the 2010 World Cup come June, but UEFA president Michel Platini is already thinking about Euro 2012.

The tournament will be co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine, and both nations have been criticised more than once for the slow progress in infrastructure improvements and stadium construction projects.

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In Poznan, Gdansk and Wroclaw people are happy that thanks to Euro 2012 they will have a modern stadium for 40 thousands of spectators.

At the same time, activists of the Lech, Lechia and Silesia clubs are worried and wonder what to do so as not to make the tribunes empty during the top league matches.

A 40-thousandth facility occupied in the middle looks pretty gloomily. It will be better if all seats of the 15-thousandth stadium are occupied with spectators – said Michael Lipczyński, marketing director of Lech. In the last season Ruch Chorzow played at the Silesian Stadium.

Over 40 thousands of people watched the match only with Górnik Zabrze, others had lower results.

Will the tribunes of new stadiums after Euro 2012 be occupied at all during the matches of Lech, Lechia or Silesia?

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The final tournament of European football championships in 2012 will start one day earlier than originally planned.

The opening match at the National Stadium in Warsaw will take place on 8 June, not 9 June. Information about the change of the date was confirmed by PAP spokesman of the company Euro 2012 Poland Julius Głuski.

The decision, which was formally approved at the meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee in December, is justified by the need to extend the period of rest between the group phase and quarterfinals.

According to the new schedule, team players advancing to the next phase of tournaments will have three days of rest before the next meeting.

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On Monday morning, lifting of the 400-tonne truss, one on the elements of roof structure, was supposed to begin.

The construction has to be lifted by three cranes excavators at the height of 58 meters and placed on two already mounted trusses. Meanwhile, works have not yet begun because builders of the Poznan stadium again have problems with the installation of roof construction.

Ryszard Dembinski, chief executive of Euro Poznan 2012, states that such a situation will no affect the deadline of returning Lech players to the stadium at Byłgarska street. Lech players were supposed to play their first match at the end of September, then it was 21 November and finally Kolejorz in Poznan is to play in March next year.

Fifty million hryvnas (about 17 million zlotys) for the construction of the stadium will have been given to Lviv before the end of this year.

Such a declaration was made on Tuesday in Lviv by the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko after hearing the report of the city authorities on preparations for the European Football Championships in 2012.

Tymoshenko stressed that the situation of the construction of stadium in Lviv was improving. – All necessary steps pertaining to the construction were taken and auditors were engaged into it. Everything goes according to the schedule set with the UEFA – she added.

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Euro 2012 will take place in four Polish and four Ukrainian cities with the final match in Kiev – decided UEFA Executive Committee, which finishes deliberations on the Portuguese island, Madera.

Recent decisions of the government, which granted additional means for preparations and approved financial plan, decided about such division – admitted Michael Platini.

- It’s victory of Ukraine – said, with relief, the Prime Minister Julia Tymoszenko at a special press conference. – I’m happy that the championships will take place in all four Ukrainian cities!

Likewise most of the Ukrainians who were anxiously waiting for UEFA’s decisions. Now Ukraine may breathe a sigh of relief – we got everything we’ve been concerned about since May.

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The official logo, visual identity and slogan for UEFA EURO 2012™ have been unveiled at a special event in Kyiv’s Mykhailivska Square with co-hosts Ukraine and Poland looking forward to ‘Creating History Together’.

Star guests

Polish Football Association President Grzegorz Lato, his Football Federation of Ukraine counterpart Grigoriy Surkis and UEFA President Michel Platini officially unwrapped the logo as the highlight of the launch proceedings. The ceremony was attended by the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, representatives from the eight host cities – Gdansk, Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw, Lviv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kyiv – and numerous other dignitaries.

Visual identity

The purpose of the logo is to give UEFA EURO 2012™ a personality of its own, with the visual identity to be applied across a range of promotional applications from tickets to web banners. The objective is to help promote the tournament – one of the world’s biggest sporting events – by providing an easily recognisable identity with a flavour of the host nations. The logo takes its visual lead from ‘wycinanka’, the traditional art of paper cutting practised in rural areas of Poland and Ukraine, as a tribute to the fauna and flora of the region. (read more…)

The European Football Union announced on Wednesday a division into six baskets before eliminations of the 2012 European Championships in Poland and Ukraine.

The ceremony will be held on 7 February 2010 in the Congress Hall in Warsaw.

UEFA made the division based on the team ranking, which incorporates the results in qualifications and tournaments of the World Cup finals in 2006 and ME 2008, as well as eliminations for next year’s World Cup in South Africa.

In the first basket, which is made up of nine top teams, the following ones are included: Spain – European Champion, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy – World Champion, England, Croatia, Portugal, France and Russia.

Poland and Ukraine, as owners, are guaranteed a place in EURO 2012, but taking into account the ranking they would be found in the third basket. (read more…)