European Championships 2012 – Ukraine Prepares
Ukraine still has a lot of work to do before it hosts the European Championships in 2012, but things are looking up since last year when it was threatened with losing the tournament because of construction delays.
When Ukraine was award the Euro 2012 competition in a joint bid with Poland, Ukraine’s president at the time, Viktor Yushchenko said,
“The Euro 2012 will become a remarkable opportunity for Ukrainians and the Polish people to receive the best representatives of the European football family and to present an outstanding football event to the game’s lovers throughout the world.”
But as early as 2008 it looked very worrying for the Ukrainians with UEFA voicing concerns over ‘critical slippages’ in the preparation and with the global economic problems hitting hard in Ukraine there were rumours that the tournament might have to be hosted in it’s entirety by Poland as late as 2009/2010.
The host cities of kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv and Donetsk were given ultimatums about their infrastructure, including accomodation and stadium building.
The Kiev Olympic stadium was built to host the Soviet Union’s Olympics in the summer of 1980. Today however, it is run down and having a complete overhaul to pull it out of the Soviet 1980′s.
Uefa now says that it is happy with progress after the Ukrainian government went through a massive building effort including building 4 new airport terminals in order to welcome the large amount of visitors expected over the summer of 2012.
The Ukrainians themselves are now started to look forward to the event as they are exposed to new adverts and promotional materials designed to show a new image of a modern and welcoming Ukraine.
English lessons are becoming popular and compulsory for some branches of the public services, such as the police force and the tournament officials.
Photo: Klearchos Kapoutsis
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