CARDIFF, Wales (AP):EUROPEAN SOCCER may have just taken its biggest gamble. The 2012 European Championship is going behind the old Iron Curtain to Poland and Ukraine - without even one of the 12 proposed venues completed.
"Within five years we will build a new country," Ukraine soccer federation president Hrihoriy Surkis said yesterday after the joint bid won the right to host the tournament. "We won't have a better opportunity to do so."
The former eastern bloc hasn't hosted the continental championship since Yugoslavia in 1976.
The 12 members of UEFA's executive committee could have opted for Italy. It would have been a safe choice, given its world-class stadiums and infrastructure.
In the last year, though, Italian soccer has been tainted by a match-fixing scandal and hooliganism.
When the 12 members of UEFA's executive committee voted yesterday, the Italians collected just four votes.
The joint bid from Croatia and Hungary failed to win a single vote and Poland and Ukraine won in the first round of balloting.
It is a major fulfilment of UEFA president Michel Platini's desire to shift the power in European soccer away from the powerhouse nations.
Worthy winner
"They are surely a worthy winner," Platini said at Cardiff City Hall.
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko and former Olympic pole vault champion Sergei Bubka of Ukraine were in Cardiff for the vote, along with Ukraine president Victor Yushchenko.
"I'm happy they trusted us," Bubka said. "I don't see any problems, everything will be done in time. We need this and this decision will accelerate the development of infrastructure in our countries."
Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kiev and Lviv in Ukraine, and Gdansk, Krakow, Poznan, Warsaw, Wroclaw and Chorzow in Poland have been lined upas venues for Euro 2012.
The opening match is scheduled to be staged at the new 70,000-capacity National Stadium in Warsaw when construction work is completed in 2009 at a cost of euro400 million.
The final will be held at Kiev's redeveloped Olympic Stadium.
The European Championship was jointly hosted for the first time in 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands. Switzerland and Austria are co-hosting the 2008 edition of the quadrennial event.
