Big football may not reach the Black Sea coast. Odessa, originally considered as one of the four main cities in the Ukrainian part of the application, is included in the reserve list. Today, priority is given to Kiev, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Lviv, and from the Polish side to Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, Wroclaw, Krakow and Chorzow. Spare stadiums - in Odessa and Kharkov. In Kiev, most likely, the final will take place.
Representatives of the happy host countries raise the topic of stadiums with the greatest desire. Ukrainians are going to rebuild literally everything - from the famous "Olympic" in the capital, reducing the capacity of its stands to 75 thousand. By the way, the construction of a shopping complex near the Olimpiysky may be a serious obstacle for football in Kiev - at least UEFA strongly recommended that the construction site be closed. Maybe the capital will get another brand new 60 thousandth. The rapidly developing football infrastructure in Donetsk promises to replenish by the end of 2008 with a 50,000th ultra-modern stadium. The 35 thousandth in Dnepropetrovsk should be completed by September of this year, but they have not decided what to do with the Karpaty stadium in Lviv.
The Polish part of the application for today looks less optimistic. They plan to build a completely new stadium with 70,000 seats in the capital; in other cities, all arenas undergo major reconstruction. Do they promise all this magnificence no earlier than 2009-2010? - perhaps, a stock of two years should be enough.
Other problems that the two federations will face are predictable - the lack of normal hotels and a good transport system. The representatives themselves acknowledge this. But they are still silent about the fans' problem - Ivan Fedorenko, the executive director from the Ukrainian side, says that the influx of fans “will help Ukraine to Europeanize”. Considering that in Poland, Ukraine and neighboring Russia (at least its European part) the population is slightly less than in the rest of Europe, the question arises. What will be the policy of “sorting” the fans, from each of whom Fedorenko is going to receive $ 400 a day?
The UEFA decision surprisingly coincided with another round of political instability in Ukraine, but the scandal in the Polish Football Federation seemed a much more serious obstacle. After the fact of match-fixing in the Polish Premier League was made public, the Minister of Sports dismissed the top leadership of the federation together with its president, Michal Listkevich, the very man who today happily hugged in Grigory Surkis in Cardiff. However, UEFA intervened in Polish affairs, dissatisfied with internal arbitrariness, and returned Listkevich to his place. Only two clubs of the Polish elite division, exiled to the lower leagues, were affected.
One can only hope that in the next five years Ukraine and Poland will solve not only their internal problems, but they will not forget about the European Championship.