EURO 2021

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 […]

Four Ukrainian cities – Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv and Kharkiv – have been confirmed as the host cities for the Euro 2012 European Football Championship, with Kyiv being chosen to stage the final, a source in UEFA told Interfax-Ukraine. The UEFA Executive Committee passed this decision at its meeting in Madeira, Portugal, on Dec. 11, the source said. “I’m pleased to tell that thanks to the tremendous efforts of the Ukrainian government we can finally give the green light to a symmetrical tournament with four cities in Poland and Kiev, Lviv, […]

On Saturday, in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine the modernized stadium of the Metalist club was opened. Matches of the European football championships will take place here in 2012. I am convinced that Euro 2012 matches will take place at the facility – said the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko at a ceremony. In his brief speech he stressed that Ukraine organizes the finals together with Poland. “The hosts of Euro 2012 can only be Ukraine and Poland.” Although, in view of the championships Ukraine has opened two stadiums so far (in […]

UEFA president Michel Platini has announced that he is pleased with Poland’s progress towards hosting the for coming UEFA EURO 2012™. Platini believes that the UEFA EURO 2012™ organizing committee is operating successfully and the whole process of preparing the tournament is under control – such conclusions were reached by UEFA officials who have been following the situation in Poland to date. “Preparations for UEFA EURO 2012™ in Poland are being realized according to schedule, but the situation in Ukraine is quite complex,” stated Platini after meeting the President of […]

Poland have appointed local Franciszek Smuda as coach in place of sacked Dutchman Leo Beenhakker. Having missed out on a World Cup berth and qualifying automatically as hosts for Euro 2012, Smuda’s first competitive game is more than two and a half years away. Smuda, who is the national team’s 44th coach, has a contract until the end of the European Championship in which Poland are guaranteed an automatic place as co-hosts with Ukraine. Smuda replaces temporary coach Stefan Majewski, whose team lost the last two games of the 2010 […]

The anti-racist East Europe Monitoring Centre starts its operation in Warsaw this month. The newly launched centre is going to monitor, research and document cases of racism and xenophobia across the region, with a special emphasis on Poland and Ukraine. ‘The growing social significance of football in Poland and Ukraine before 2012 provides an excellent opportunity to highlight the pressing issues of xenophobia and racism in Eastern Europe’ – said sociologist Dr Rafal Pankowski, the Monitoring Centre coordinator. ‘Our starting point is racism in football, but we see it in […]

The city authorities have devoted 173.7 millions of hryvnias for the preparation of the Charkow region for the EURO 2012. The largest part of these funds will be spent on the modernization of a stadium and the runway of the Charkow airport. 100 millions of gryvnias devoted to the reconstruction of Metallist stadium, 56.7 millions of hryvnias for the reconstruction of the runaway of the International Airport in Charkow and 17 millions of hryvnias for the reconstruction of roads. The authorities also freed from the duty goods and commodities (total […]

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 […]

Polish Minister of Sports and Tourism Mirosław Drzewiecki and Andrzej Bogucki, Board Member of PL 2012 have met with a visiting trade mission from Saudi Arabia. The visit of potential investors is the result of Minster Drzewiecki’s, Treasury Minister’s Aleksander Grad’s and Prime Minister’s Donald Tusk’s visit to Saudi Arabia last March. The main subject of the talks were possible investments ahead of the UEFA EURO 2012 Football Championship which will begin in Poland and Ukraine in 1045 days. Andrzej Bogucki of PL 2012, the coordinator of preparatory undertakings for […]

UEFA president Michel Platini confirmed that the final decision concerning EURO 2012 host cities will be taken in December. During his of the western city of Poznan, Platini said that four Polish cities – Gdansk, Wroclaw, Poznan and Warsaw – as well as the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, have initial approval to host the event. The decision was conditional in the case of three remaining Ukrainian cities, however: “These cities have five more months to work on their progress,” he said. The UEFA president denied reports that UEFA is planning to […]