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Ukraine win bid to host UEFA Euro 2012!

Ukraine along with co-hosts Poland has been the surprise win for the UEFA Euro 2012 football games. Confirmed on Wednesday 18^th 2007 by UEFA, both countries will be jointly hosting the 2012 tournaments in 8 cities.

This comes as excellent news to both countries as neither Ukraine nor Poland had hosted a major football tournament before. The last Eastern European country to host the Euro cup was Yugoslavia in 1976. They also won majority votes in the first round (8 out of 12 votes) while the favourites, Italy, only received 4.

UEFA were impressed by the presentation of Ukraine and Poland on Tuesday which included a range of sports stars including Andriy Shevchenko (Ukrainian Chelsea striker), Liverpool keeper Jerzy Dudek as well as Ukrainian boxer Vitali Klitschko, former Olympic champion Sergei Bubka and Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko.

Sergei Bubka, the former world and Olympic pole vault champion and now president of the Ukraine Olympic Committee and an IOC member added: "This is a remarkable achievement for our country. It is an astonishing success."

Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the government would within 10 days draw up a programme to prepare for the championship.

"In terms of the economy, Ukraine will come out a winner. It will provide a serious boost for developing our infrastructure and tourism," Azarov told a briefing afterwards.

"What's important is that we will have not only Ukrainian resources working on this, but also foreign investors."

In Ukraine, games will be played in the following cities:

• Lviv (Lvov)
• Kiev
• Donetsk
• Dnipropetrovsk

In Poland, games will be hosted in:

• Gdansk
• Wroclaw
• Poznan
• Warsaw

The finals are planned to be held in Kiev which has hosted the football tournaments in the Moscow Olympic games in 1980.

New stadiums will be built in the Ukrainian cities and plans can be seen here. A hotel construction company (Sambu Construction) is planning to build a chain of hotels in the historic city of Lviv in Western Ukraine. These new hotels are part of the Ukrainian government’s plans to be able to accommodate all the expected visitors.

Football is hugely popular in both Ukraine and Poland and the decision announced by Michael Platini (UEFA president) was met with scenes of jubilation throughout both countries. "Finally, the big event is going to the countries which have had no opportunities to improve football," Polish Football Association chairman Michal Listkiewicz said.

Ukraine and Poland are looking to integrate with Western Europe and this decision will certainly help the goals of both countries.

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