Euro 2012
UEFA European Football Championship 2012 shorter Euro 2012 and officially UEFA Euro 2012 is a men's football tournament held every four years in Europe. This year will be held for the fourteenth time, in Poland and Ukraine. This is the third case in which the two countries are organizing the Euro together. Before it had been done Belgium with the Netherlands in 2000 and Austria with Switzerland in 2008. The official tournament slogan is "Together we create the future". The first match will be played on 8 of June in Warsaw and the last on 1 July 2012 in Kiev. The tournament had a lot of support among the local population: 85.4% Ukrainians and 66.8% of Poles voted "yes" during elections.
Initially, the desire to organize the finals of Euro 2012 have expressed 12 countries. They have submitted to the UEFA 9 applications (6 single and 3 double). For the final stage the UEFA Executive Committee decided to select three candidates: Italian, Croatian-Hungarian and Polish-Ukrainian. Greece (with 2 votes) and Turkey (6 votes) were eliminated, the rest of the candidates had not provided the required documents on time. Polish and Ukrainian offer won by a absolute majority of votes, so the second round of voting was not necessary.
The biggest challenges that Poland and Ukraine had to face were the lack of neither organization of any major event in football nor organization of an international event in cooperation with the foreign partner. Another challenge was the lack of adequate infrastructure, especially stadiums and transport infrastructure. However, Poland and Ukraine were selected on 18 April 2007 by UEFA at the meeting in the Welsh city of Cardiff.
The official unveiling of the logo of the European Championship 2012 was held on the Mikhailovsky square on 14 December 2009, in Kiev. Grzegorz Lato, Hryhoriy Surkis and Michel Platini have shown for the first time official logo of Euro 2012 to assembled guests, among whom were the most important Ukrainian politicians and representatives of all hosting cities. Logo refers to the culture and tradition of both countries. Its main element is the stem of which grows the ball. On the western side there is a white and red flower in colours symbolizing Poland, and on the right side a blue-yellow flowers in the colours of Ukraine.
The official mascots of the championships - Slavek and Slavko were presented on November 16, 2010 at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw. They were immediately criticized because the names are not catchy and do not refer to the tradition (at least) of the Polish nation. The mascots are jokingly called Vodko and Pivko, which sounds similar to vodka and beer and is related linguistically to the original version.
Official ball of the UEFA European Football Championship 2012, manufactured by Adidas - model Tango 12, is composed of 32 panels covered with thermally coupled special convex shell, designed to facilitate contact with the heel and ball control, which should help players do many spectacular tricks. 24 panels are arranged in six white circles, the contours of which are national colours of Poland and Ukraine. The remaining eight are separating the previous ones. They are black with graphics referring to the folk culture of the organizers of the championships. Appearance of the ball refers to the predecessor of 1978 used during the World Championship in Argentina.
As in previous editions of the tickets were randomly allocated on the basis of applications submitted through the organizer's website. Euro 2012 Tickets went on sale in spring 2011. From the total amount of 1 million 400 thousand only 41% were available for fans. The sale included several types of tickets including tickets for individual matches, tickets for all matches of a specific team, and tickets for all matches in a given stadium. Tickets were also available for people with disabilities.