There are three stages of preparations for the European soccer championships in 2012. According to Serhii Vasyliev, head of the information policy department at the Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU), the first stage was completed on June 27, 2008, at the end of the Euro 2008 championships. That was when the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) began its preparations for the next event scheduled to be held in Poland (Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, and Wroclaw) and Ukraine (Kyiv, Lviv, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk).
The meeting between UEFA president Michel Platini and Ukraine’s top political leadership marked the beginning of the second stage. “Michel Platini’s visit to Ukraine is primarily connected to UEFA’s preparations for the next championships. He wanted to hear from the Ukrainian president and prime minister that they guarantee that Ukraine will uphold the stand it took when it was submitting a bid for the Euro 2012 tender. In other words, they checked their watches,” Vasyliev explained.
The FFU stressed that Platini’s visit to Kyiv did not include an inspection of sports facilities. Such inspections are carried out by the UEFA commission whose experts visit Ukraine every two weeks and meet with the host city mayors, who take them to the sports facilities and give them with progress reports from ministries and agencies. After that the experts report their findings to the UEFA’s executive committee.
In recent months Ukrainian and European newspapers have been reporting that Ukraine will not be able to prepare for Euro-2012 on time. The FFU says that “Michel Platini has issued repeated statements about this, and quite recently, during a press conference after Euro 2008, he declared that UEFA’s position remains unchanged: UEFA has no intentions of replacing the Euro 2012 partners.”
According to Ukrainian experts, the status of preparations for the soccer championships in Ukraine should be analyzed according to what is being done instead of predicting what will happen three years from now.
“Euro 2012 is a marathon, not a 100-meter race, so this marathon has certain stages. Schedules must be controlled at every stage. The UEFA’s supervisory board (strategic council) and executive committee met in Vienna in late June to sum up the first stage of preparations, namely to discuss a draft master plan of the infrastructure submitted by Ukraine. Certain remarks and suggestions were made that must be taken into account by Sept. 25, and then UEFA will make conclusions proceeding from this,” Vasyliev noted.
Experts emphasize that if we keep shouting all over Europe about our inability to prepare for Euro 2012, Europe will finally believe us. They quote Platini’s reply to a Ukrainian journalist: “It’s your problem that such rumors are being spread in Europe. UEFA is not spreading any rumors. With this kind of behavior you are attracting international attention and people are starting to have doubts.”
Ukrainians, above all journalists, should draw the right conclusions from this and not indulge in self-disparagement. Repeating the mantra, “We won’t be ready on time!” will not lead to anything good.
The State Program to Prepare for Euro 2012 envisages 92.6 billion hryvnias’ worth of investments, including 15.5 billion this year. The overall costs are estimated at 126.4 billion hryvnias, including 21.4 billion worth of central budget appropriations and 12.4 billion from local budgets.
