Polkraine Gets an Inspection from Principal Platini

July 3rd, 2008 | by: Daryl |

If you ignore the bit where all the television pictures disappeared, Euro 2008 in Swissautria went nice and smooth. UEFA are obviously hoping for the same from Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, but haven’t been sounding entirely confident lately.

It’s part of Michel Platini’s plan to spread the wealth to Eastern Europe for the first time, but UEFA apparently called Polkraine to his office in January and told it to “wake up” and put more effort in. The co-hosts were given a few short months to get their grades up.

Polkraine needs to get stadiums built, get hotels built and get infrastructure ready for the masses of Euro 2012 fans to descend. Platini visited (read: inpsected) Poland yesterday and is in Ukraine today. Let’s hope he likes what he sees.

We already know Sepp Blatter has a mysterious Plan B for World Cup 2010, but Platini insists there’s no such thing in place for Euro 2012:

“We will do everything we can to ensure Poland and Ukraine host it and there is no backup plan.

Things seemed to go pretty well in Poland, but Platini had a word of warning for the Ukrainians:

“Responsibility (for Euro 2012) lies as much on you, as it does on me,” Platini said. “The situation is not as we thought and we will have to work a great deal on it.”

Maybe Ukraine’s decision to stage a riot for Michel Platini wasn’t such a good idea?

I can see the logic behind it – to display crowd control techniques – but seeing a massive riot in Kiev, no matter how fake, can’t have put Michel Platini in a very positive frame of mind.

I wonder what Poland think about all this? Can you imagine how angry they’ll be if Euro 2012 is taken elsewhere and it’s all Ukraine’s fault?

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mele419

I think they wouldn’t move it to two totally different countries because of Ukraine. I would imagine they would let Poland co-host with another nation…
http://n/a Evil Han

I believe that Poland can host UEFA Euro 2012 by themselves. They are a pretty good size nation with 6-8 major cities. A well size population of over 40 million. The Poles as a former Eastern-Block were able to adapt and intergret with the Western-Block quite well: economically and politically. Although this took sometime for the Poles to be a true successful nation throughout Europe. They were able to enter into NATO 1999 and EU 2004. In 2010, the Poles will adopt the Euro Currency. Overall, they came along ways.
skillz

The reason the two countries were awarded the tournament was because of how good Ukraine did in the world cup 2006. And the reason they qualified so easily and the first of all teams and cause they made the quarter finals has a lot to do with shevchenko. They announced the decision right after world cup when Ukrainian soccer was on such a high. So this decision had more to do with Ukrainian success and the success of shevchenko. Poland are quite lucky to ride on Ukraine’s coat tails. That is also why the final is going to be held in Kiev.