UEFA president Michel Platini announced the winner at Cardiff City Hall, Wales.
The Union of European Football Associations overlooked favorite Italy and a joint bid from Croatia and Hungary to award the continental championships to a former Eastern Bloc country for the first time since Yugoslavia in 1976.
UEFA president Michel Platini announced the winner at Cardiff City Hall, Wales, after a private meeting of 12 members of the executive committee on April 18.
“It will be a milestone in the common history of two Slavic nations,” Poland soccer federation president Michal Listkiewicz said.
Poland and Ukraine won the right to host the tournament in the first round of balloting, collecting eight votes to Italy’s four. The Croatia-Hungary bid failed to win a single vote.
“Within five years, we will build a new country and we won’t have a better opportunity to do so,” Ukraine soccer federation president Hrihoriy Surkis said.
Chelsea’s Ukrainian striker, Andriy Shevchenko, ex-world heavyweight boxing champion, Vitaliy Klitschko, and former Olympic pole vault champion, Serhiy Bubka, were in Cardiff for the vote, along with President Viktor Yushchenko.
On April 17, Yushchenko said that 83 percent of Ukrainians supported the idea of hosting the championship. He also noted that Ukraine and Poland can expect to sell products and services worth $3 billion during the event.
In Poland, the matches will be played in Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw, while the venues in Ukraine will be Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv and Lviv. Sixteen teams will play a total of 31 matches over three weeks in June of 2012. The championship will open in Warsaw, and the final will be played in Kyiv.
Neither country has previously hosted a major finals tournament, and concerns still remain about the shortage of high-quality hotels and poor transport infrastructure in both Poland and Ukraine.
