EURO 2021

Euro 2012 outside of Warsaw? This scenario is very propable. The capital may be replaced by Chorzów. Mirosław Drzewiecki, a dead cert candidate for minister of sport, does not rule this possibility out.

We may face an outrageous disgrace – championship of Europe 2012 will pass over the capital. Hitherto something like that has been unthinkable. Except for the championship in FRG in 1988, but only because in divided Germany Bonn played a purely administrative role. Now it turns out, that in five years the best players from the Old Continent and tens of thousands of fans will give wide berth to Warsaw. All that because of the argument about the location of National Stadium.

– The thing is to spend as little tax-payers money as possible, and not to make the stadium block the city’s center – the president of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz stated yesterday. This means one thing: The National will not be built in a ruin-like Tenth Anniversary Stadium. This is confirmed by Mirosław Drzewiecki, PO party MP and dead cert candidate for minister of sport in the new government: – previous location is no longer valid – he stated.

It is a blow for the retiring department chief Elżbieta Jakubiak. It was her decision to build The National Stadium just beside the dissipating giant. In November it was planned to choose companies to bid for the building. The plan assumed that next year all the procedures will be finalised, and at the beginning of 2009 excavators and bulldozers will enter the building site. The stadium was to be ready for the spring of 2011.

– The change od location means that we will not be in time, and the opening game will not take place in Warsaw – comments minister Jakubiak. The president of the capital guaranteed, that there is no such danger, but Mirosław Drzewiecki does not quite share this opinion. – We are at the starting point. We can ask experts if we will be in time. But if not, we must as soon as possible decide to move the opening match to Chorzów – he thinks.

– We wish everybody all the best, Warsaw naturally too, but when such a need occurs, we will organize the opening match. We are up to the job – admits the chief of Silesian Stadium Marek Szczerbowki. – After all, the stadium is already finnished, and morover, such a game is easier to orginize than a concert, visited for example by 70 thousand people – he adds.

Hitherto Chorzów together with Cracow was on the so called reserve cities to organize EURO 2008. Certain were Wroclaw, Gdańsk, Poznań and also Warsaw. Later on, it was probed several times, if it would be possible to make championship on six stadiums. UEFA denied each time. So if we move the opening game to Chorzów, Warsaw will go without.

Why doesn’t PO want the new building to be errected in the viccinity ot Tenth Anniversary Stadium? It is primarily about the money. Vast areas by Vistula are worth about 4 bilion zlote. Were they sold, it would bring means to buy less expensive areas on the outskirts of the cities and there would still remain enough money for one stadium. – Besides, nowadays nowhere in the world such buildings are erected in the center of the city – argues Drzewiecki.