A senior European football official urged Ukraine on Wednesday to speed up preparations for the 2012 European Championship.
Euro 2012 chief operating officer Martin Kallen said Ukraine
has made some progress, but that more work is needed in building
hotels, stadiums and airports in the four cities that want to play host
to the event.
“Each city still has quite a lot of homework to
do,” Kallen said. “Considerable work has been done and there is still
work to be done.”
UEFA officials have insisted that Ukraine will get to host the event despite organizational setbacks, but the number of cities is still undecided.
Ideally, both Ukraine and Poland get to have four host cities each. But there are concerns that Ukraine might have to cede some of the hosting rights to Poland due to preparation delays. Ukraine’s
devastating financial crisis and paralyzing political turmoil ahead of
January presidential elections have set back preparations.
A final decision on the number of host cities will be made in December.
Kallen reaffirmed that so far Kiev is on track to host the final match of the championship. The other host city hopefuls are Donetsk and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, and the western city of Lviv.
Hryhoriy Surkis, the head of Ukraine’s football federation, expressed confidence that his country will successfully host the championship.
“We will continue to demonstrate progress,” Surkis said.
