2012 UEFA European Football Championship

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The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, or Euro 2012 for short, will be the 14th quadrennial top-level European football (soccer) event. It will be held in the summer of the year 2012. The host nation(s) are yet to be selected. It is considered likely that the field of participants will be expanded from 16 to 24.^[1]

1 Host selection process
2 The candidates
3 External links

[edit] Host selection process

The organization of the event was initially contested for by five bids representing seven countries: Croatia/Hungary (joint bid), Greece, Italy, Poland/Ukraine (joint bid), and Turkey.

On November 8, 2005, UEFA's Executive Committee whittled the candidates down to a short list of three:

Italy (11 Committee member votes)
Croatia/Hungary (9 votes)
Poland/Ukraine (7 votes)

Turkey and Greece were eliminated with 6 and 2 votes respectively.

On May 31, 2006 all three bids completed the second phase of the process by submitting more detailed dossiers.

In September 2006, UEFA conducted site visits to candidate countries. Shortly thereafter, in October, it decided to postpone the actual decision making time (which was set to December 2006).

The host is set to be chosen in April 2007.

[edit] The candidates

[edit] Italy

The following cities have been proposed by the Italian Football Federation:

Rome, Milan, Bari, Florence, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Udine and, should the tournament be extended to 24 teams Bologna, Cagliari, Genoa and Verona: the same stadia pool as for Italia 90.

Italy has already hosted the European Football Championship finals in 1968 and 1980, and also hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1934 and 1990.

The experience that the Italian football association has with the organization of these events is a major plus for their bid, as it gives the bid the most solid basis. None of the other short-list candidates has ever hosted the finals of a major football tournament independently or as part of a joint bid (but see below for one exception). Plus, the Winter Olympics in Turin proved the Italian ability to host a major event.

Yet, Italy's experience is also a minor problem due to the risk of causing apathy among the fans for repeatedly re-using the same host nation. Also, the recent 2006 Serie A scandal damaged the overall standing of Italian football. Many hope that the FIFA World Cup victory in Berlin can repair Italy's image in the world of calcio.

[edit] Hungary and Croatia

The following cities have been proposed by the Hungarian Football Federation and the Croatian Football Federation:

Zagreb (CRO), Split (CRO), Rijeka (CRO), Osijek (CRO), Budapest (HUN), Székesfehérvár (HUN), Győr (HUN), Debrecen (HUN)

Hungary will hope for a successful bid as they failed in both the Euro 2004 and Euro 2008 bid. The two countries teamed up after Austria abandoned its joint bid with Hungary to host Euro 2008.

While the infrastructure in the two countries is largely inferior to the situation in Italy, both countries have accumulated some merit in international football with their "golden generations" (Hungarian in the 1950s and Croatian in the 1990s), and it is likely that they could make the necessary infrastructure improvements given their current economic situation which is favourable.

Recently the bid was hampered by the outbursts of hooliganism and neo-nazism by some Croatian football fans, as well as the 2006 protests in Hungary and the protest of a group of Hungarian fans during the UEFA delegation visit in Budapest (claiming that they shouldn't host the tournament since football is currently in a poor general state in Hungary).

Neither of the two countries ever hosted similar major tournaments, although Croatia's capital Zagreb did host one semifinal and the third-place match of Euro 1976 when the country was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

[edit] Poland and Ukraine

The following cities have been proposed by the Polish Football Association and the Football Federation of Ukraine:

Chorzów (POL), Gdańsk (POL), Kraków (POL), Poznań (POL), Warsaw (POL), Wrocław (POL), Dnipropetrovsk (UKR), Donetsk (UKR), Kiev (UKR), Lviv (UKR)

The joint Polish-Ukraininan bid is considered to be interesting by many, as a way of shifting the focus towards the areas of Europe that have numerous football fans but are less developed than those in western Europe, both regarding the game development and in general.

Their bid is hampered by numerous infrastructural deficiencies, however. After their visit, the UEFA delegates themselves complained publicly about the bad state of the road between Gdansk to Lviv.