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.
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:
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.
The candidates
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).
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.
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), Szekesfehervar (HUN), Gyor (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.
Poland and Ukraine
The following cities have been proposed by the Polish Football
Association and the Football Federation of Ukraine:
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.
