11/25/08

Sport in Ukraine

Euro 2012 Championship: New Doubts, New Hopes

By Katya Shtamburg, Nova Mova staff writer, from Internet sources.

Slow progress in preparing Ukrainian and Polish facilities for the 2012 European Football Championship continues to endanger Ukraine’s and Poland’s hopes to host the tournament.

Earlier this year, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) confirmed Poland and Ukraine as the co-hosts for the Euro 2012 championship. This vote of confidence was given even though there were many doubts concerning the ability of the ex-communist countries to meet the considerable challenge of building the required stadiums and upgrading their transportation and hotel sectors in time.

But now the UEFA commission has been confronted with new doubts. The construction of stadiums is going slower than anticipated, and experts doubt that all will be finished by the time of the championship.  UEFA President Michael Platini said that the lack of progress is a problem for both countries and raised the specter that they could lose the games.

"Poland and Ukraine know that there is a major condition (for their bid): that the stadiums in their capitals be ready on time,” Platini said.  “If the stadiums in the capitals are not built, the Euro 2012 event will go neither to Kyiv nor to Warsaw. Poland and Ukraine will not be allowed to split their bid to co-host the 2012 championships and will either host it together or not at all.”

Meanwhile the president of the Bulgarian football union, Borislav Mihailov, announced that Bulgaria and Romania were planning to make a joint bid to host the European championships in 2020. He said that they knew that it would be hard work but added that they still had enough time to prepare.

This announcement was followed by the Platini’s visit to Bulgaria. The UEFA president arrived on November 12 for a two-day visit during which he met with Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev and attended the landmark ceremony of a new UEFA-funded football technical center in Sofia.

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