SOCCER:The 2012 European Championship will be co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine after Uefa's executive committee delivered a major surprise yesterday, awarding the tournament to the unfancied joint bid with a two-thirds majority which signals a shift to the east in European football's centre of gravity.
Uefa's shock decision to look east is a huge snub to Italy, whose bid was expected to win despite the country's tawdry recent history of match-fixing scandals and hooliganism.
In the event Poland and Ukraine were comfortable winners, defeating the Italian bid by eight votes to four, with the third contender, a joint bid from Hungary and Croatia, attracting no support in a secret ballot of Uefa executive committee members in Cardiff.
The result was the first major decision taken under the presidency of Michel Platini, and although even he appeared shocked it will be interpreted as the first step in delivering on his election pledge to spread the wealth and power in European football more widely.
He courted the eastern European countries during his election campaign, and even though Ukraine publicly supported his opponent, Lennart Johansson, this result will be seen in some quarters as payback for support from former Soviet nations.
The announcement was greeted with delight by a large delegation from the victorious countries, including the former Olympic pole-vault champion Sergei Bubka and heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko.
The Chelsea striker Andriy Schevchenko also attended presentations in Cardiff on Tuesday, as did Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, and his Polish counterpart, Lech Kaczynski.
The former Polish president Lech Walesa also backed the bid, writing to Platini to recount his memories of watching the Frenchman play in Gdansk at the height of the Solidarity uprising.
Bubka said: "This decision will have a huge positive impact on the countries.
"There will not be a problem with the stadia, work on some new ones are already under way - one will be ready later this year and another next year.
"Everything will be done it time and the governments have promised the funding will be made available. This will accelerate the development of infrastructure in our countries."
Stiff challenges do lie ahead, however, apart from a lack of football facilities, and transport and hotel infrastructure, the sheer size of the countries is a problem.
For example the distance between Gdansk in north-west Poland and Dnipropetrovsk in south-east Ukraine is more than 1,000 miles.
The security services of the two countries will also face a challenge they will not have encountered before in terms of both a terrorist threat and the likelihood of football hooligans descending on the tournament from across Europe.
Both Poland and Ukraine have strong footballing traditions, with Ukraine having reached the quarter-finals of the last World Cup in their first appearance since seceding from the Soviet Union.
Poland were eliminated at the group stage but finished third in the 1974 and 1982 World Cups as well as winning the 1972 Olympic title.
Although Uefa welcomed the decision to award the hosting of the 2012 finals to the two countries, it does pose a big challenge to the organisation. The joint hosting of Euro 2008 by Austria and Switzerland has proved problematic even for two small and prosperous nations and those difficulties may prove trifling compared with the task of coordinating the event in two large and relatively poor countries.
The projected Polish venues include Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw and Ukraine's are Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv and Kiev, with Kiev hosting the final.
Guardian Service
