Race for Euro-2012 Begins
On July 18, 2005, the Soccer Federation of Ukraine (FFU) and the Euro-2012 executive directorate in Ukraine officially presented a bid to host the final stretch of the 2012 European Soccer Championship in Ukraine and Poland, the FFU’s official Web site reports. Journalists were shown several volumes of original documents to be delivered by officials to the UEFA headquarters in Switzerland by July 21. The overall bidding documentation consists of two volumes of 400 pages each. The documents include the concept of holding Euro-2012 in Ukraine, governmental guarantees, and official invitations signed by the president of Ukraine, parliamentary speaker, prime minister, as well as Surkis and Listkiewicz, presidents of the soccer associations of Ukraine and Poland, respectively.
The Ukrainian side plans to hold Euro-2012 matches in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, and Donetsk. The opening and final games are to be played in Warsaw and Kyiv, respectively. (Incidentally, Mykola Kostenko, head of the now abolished State Committee for Sport, predicted late last year that reconstruction of Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium alone would cost 35-40 million hryvnias.)
Ivan Fedorenko, Euro-2012 executive director in Ukraine, reported that the first stage of bidding for Euro-2012 consisted of preparing all the required documentation and obtaining financial guarantees from the cabinet and parliament. There were no problems with cabinet guarantees. Poland’s representatives intend to raise the required funds with the help of the central and regional authorities, the European Union, and private entrepreneurs. To host the tournament, the Poles must build five new stadiums and improve the transport infrastructure. They have to repair railroads and highways because they are unchanged since 1989, when Poland ceased to be a communist country. The combined population of Ukraine and Poland is over 90 million. If these two East European states win the bid, the tournament may set a record for the number of residents in a country hosting a European championship. The joint Ukrainian-Polish bidders believe that Ukraine and Poland, with due account of their geographic position, population, and level of soccer development, “stand a fair chance of hosting this championship.” The other contenders for hosting Euro-2012 are Italy, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, and Hungary. Earlier, Russia and Azerbaijan also expressed a wish to host this championship, but they later dropped the idea. In spite of optimistic outlooks (the interview with Mykola Tomenko, Vice-Premier for Humanitarian Issues, on the Ukraina TV channel), bookmakers believe that Ukraine has less of a chance than Italy, a three-time world champion, or Greece, the latest champion of Europe.
