‘We have visited all the construction sites. I think that Taylor was impressed’, says Marcin Herra
Chief of the PL2012 partnership which coordinates the arrangements for Euro 2012- in the interview ‘Polski The Times’ about the visit of UEFA Secretary General
Herra does not hide that David Taylor was extremely satisfied with the progress of arrangements for the championships in our country. He saw, for the first time, genuine, tangible building sites He saw that there is a lot going on. In Warsaw the construction works on the National Stadium are 5 weeks ahead than it was planned in the schedule. We have a complete executive project , even the handles are chosen. The procedure of choosing the main investor is coming to the end. In Gdansk you won’t find anybody who wouldn’t be impressed by the huge 30 hectare building site with dozens of people and machines – said the chief of PL2012
After a stuttering start, Poland has, unlike Ukraine, finally gained the confidence of UEFA, the governing body of European football, which recently confirmed that four Polish cities will host matches during the Euro 2012 football championships.
Following early delays, Poland is likely to have acceptable stadiums in six cities, and the airport and hotel infrastructure looks to be in good shape as well. The problem, as ever in Poland, is with building a modern system of highways and expressways that would allow fans to move easily from venue to venue.
When UEFA took the unusual and risky step of awarding the championships to Poland and Ukraine two years ago, the right-wing government of the time promised to build 3,000 km of highways and less expensive and slightly slower expressways by 2012. The man in the hot seat now is infrastructure minister Cezary Grabarczyk, who is coming under increasingly intense pressure from Donald Tusk, the prime minister, to ensure that the road programme is not a disaster. Grabarczyk has already toned down his predecessor’s promises, admitting that 2,000 km is more realistic, but even getting that amount completed by 2012 would break Poland’s longstanding inability to build roads speedily.
Following UEFA’s selection of four Polish cities as hosts for Euro 2012, Lokale Immobilia takes a brief look at the state of preparedness of the winning urban centers.
After months of doubt and sharp criticism, the four Polish cities chosen by UEFA to host games in the Euro 2012 soccer championship – Warsaw, Gdańsk, Poznań and Wrocław – have much of their preparation on track.
Indeed, though Kraków and Chorzów were officially discounted, hope remains that a slip-up elsewhere in Poland or in Ukraine could still offer the opportunity to participate in the international event. Preparations in those cities are continuing apace.
Preparations on track
In announcing the decision, UEFA president Michel Platini stressed that all the six candidate cities had met the criteria necessary to organize the tournament. He said that the exclusion of Kraków and Chorzów resulted from their alternate location status.
Last week UEFA, the governing soccer body in Europe, finally announced the four Polish cities that will host Euro 2012 championship games.
Of the six candidate cities named two years ago, Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław and Gdańsk were chosen. That left authorities and residents in Kraków and Chorzów, which were selected as alternate cities when Poland originally placed its bid for Euro 2012, extremely disappointed.
The rebuilt of the Public Stadium in Cracow is slightly different from the rest of the facilities prepared for Euro 2012. The rebuilt of the stadium whose host is commonly the Cracovian club Vistula ,began at the end of 2004. Since then, step by step the owner of the stadium successively opened the bidding for destroying the old ones and raising new tribunes.
Each of these changes in the exterior of the stadium were forced by getting through a bureaucratic tournament , because all the works required separate bidding. Additionally the project of the stadium, which initially was planned for 25 thousand people, was changed several times. Enlargement of the the stadium and change of the concept of the construction were crucial to the delays in construction of the arena.
According to the majority of the Internet users who took part in an opinion poll found on the website of the partnership coordinating the preparations for Euro 2012 Championships the stadium in Gdańsk will be the best-looking among all the arenas prepared for Euro 2012 Championships.
The ‘Baltic Arena’ (a draft name for the stadium in Gdańsk) will have an unique, amber-like elevation. The project of the stadium in Gdańsk from over 3000 thousand got 134 thousand of votes (44 %) leasing behind the project of the National Stadium in Warsaw – 115 thousand of votes (37 %)and the Public Stadium in Wrocław -34 thousand of votes (11%)
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 infrastructure in all four proposed and two reserve cities in Poland. UEFA considers that all six cities are currently in a position to fulfil the conditions for hosting matches at UEFA EURO 2012™ despite the huge amount of work that still must be undertaken to guarantee the full and proper implementation of the tournament requirements.
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 at a press conference in Warsaw, saying that overall the preparations for the tournament will be beneficial for Poland, regardless of which cities host individual matches. “Everything we’re doing is because Poland does not have good stadiums,” and not exclusively for the Euro tournament, he stated. The mayors of all of the chosen cities expressed joy at the selection and confidence that their cities will be prepared.
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 be considered because, despite its tourism industry, the number and quality of hotels is still poor and work on its stadium has only just started.
Mirosław Drzewiecki, the minister of sport and tourism, visited the stadium on Friday.
He got familiar with the project of the last step to modernize the facility. He did not hide that he is impressed by the Silesia stadium.
The Minister had visited the facility for almost an hour. In the company of the marshal Boguslaw Śmigielski and Adam Matusiewicz he visited changing rooms, conference rooms, a point of command as well ass grassland.
– The Silesian stadium is located in beautiful surroundings. There are no such facilities and changing rooms – praised the minister.
After walking Drzewiecki listened to the presentations about the progress of modernization, which was presented by Marcin Stolarz, a director of the Office for Preparation of EURO in the Silesian Voivodeship. He also saw a movie presenting what Silesian Stadium will look like in 2012. The videovisualisation prepared by the Silesian ‘Urzad Marszalkowski’ took a big impression on everybody.
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. Then, next Wednesday, Uefa will reveal the confirmed list of host cities for Euro 2012. After all the criticism and all the doubts, this will give a sense of finality.
The criticism and the doubts are justified. Both host countries suffer chronic, almost institutionalised, corruption. Poland have a poor football infrastructure but decent transport; Ukraine has poor transport but good stadiums. Both have work to do on airports and hotels. But it does seem that this is going to happen. After a Uefa inspection in February, Hrihoriy Surkis, the head of the Football Federation of Ukraine, said he had breathed a sigh of relief. The mood had changed; Uefa, after numerous warnings, was content with the progress it saw. It should be noted, though, that it has given itself until September to change the host entirely.
A model of new UEFA-standard stadium soon to be completed in the east Ukrainian city Donetsk, one of the expected host cities for Euro 2012. Photograph: Photomig/EPA
