By Andrew Warshaw
December 3 – The head of the Ukrainian half of Euro 2012 has revealed for the first time how close the country came to being stripped of hosting rights with Poland.
Ever since UEFA awarded the Championship to the joint hosts, Ukraine has been beset with problems and Grygoriy Surkis (pictured above right), President of the Ukrainian Football Association, admitted he was less than confident at one point.
The entire nation, he said, needed modernising for the biggest global sports event to be held in eastern Europe since the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
“When we started on the bid journey it seemed something fantastic and almost unachievable,” he told a news conference.
“But it became reality in 2007 when [UEFA President] Michel Platini received the piece of paper with the name of Poland and Ukraine on it.
“Now we can appreciate the patience and wisdom of UEFA in its approach towards the problems involved, especially towards Ukraine because we had to create a new infrastructure not only for sport but for all the other segments – airports, runaways, new motorways.
“Without the patience of UEFA, I can tell you frankly, we wouldn’t be sitting together in this room.
“We had to modernise the entire country and without UEFA’s patience we couldn’t have been where we are sitting here today.
“I would also also pay tribute to UEFA’s general secretary [Gianni Infantino] who would have faced an enormous challenge if Ukraine had not proved able to fulfil the guarantees.”
In May 2009 UEFA had considered using six venues in Poland and only two in Ukraine instead of half and half.
Only this past September did Platini acknowledge that Ukraine would finally be ready.
“Never in the past 20 or 30 years had there been such pressure to upgrade a country’s entire infrastructure in so short a time,” said Surkis.
“In 2008 Switzerland and Austria just had to adapt existing facilities but we had to create practically an entire new national infrastructure.”
Infantino, echoing Surkis’s words, added: “There were a few hot moments and some hot disussions as well but I think they brought our respective teams closer together to make history.”
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