Published: 2 September, 2009, 17:33
Edited: 2 September, 2009, 17:33
Three years before Euro 2012, Ukraine faces a race against time to prepare for the event it will co-host with Poland, but questions concerning the country’s stadiums, poor infrastructure and lack of hotels remain.
The grand opening of the Donbass Arena in Ukraine provided some welcome relief for the country's Euro 2012 organizing committee. The 50,000 stadium may be one of the best in Europe, but the same cannot be said of the city's accommodation and its soviet-era airport.
And time is running out, because UEFA has given Ukraine until the start of December to show signs of improvement, and the tournament director says there have been some prohibitive steps.
“I think in two or three months we can see progress. And that is very important because before we have not seen so much progress as we’ve seen in the last two months. But frankly, the situation is still critical. And we are not at the point where we can say that we’ll have four host cities in Ukraine,” Martin Kallen, Euro 2012 Tournament Director, said.
UEFA has received guarantees from all four host cites in Ukraine, that airports in Donetsk, Kiev, Lvov and Kharkov will be upgraded in time for the tournament.
It is the lack of progress surrounding the building of hotels which is most worrying, and Kallen says the next two months will be decisive if Ukraine doesn't want to lose its host cities to Poland.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done. At the moment the situation in Donetsk and other cities is not looking as good as we were hoping. We need a certain amount of hotels for the media, for the teams and for the guests coming to the cities. Those hotels can’t be too far away from the stadiums,” Martin Kallen added.
Euro 2012 will be by far the biggest sporting event to take place in Ukraine, and those in charge, say they are learning all the time.
"Ukraine has never hosted such a large event in its history. For example, if you take the visit of the Pope or Eurovision – these events were much smaller in comparison to preparing for Euro 2012. We are getting more and more experience all the time, and we are learning. Everything depends on us, and on no one else, and I'm sure we'll do all that we can to improve the country's infrastructure, in order to host the European Championships,” Markiyan Lubkivsky, Director of Local Organizing Committee, said.
It's perhaps one of the biggest tests the country had ever faced and the pressure's certainly on, but if they were able to build such a fantastic stadium like the Donbass Arena, from scratch in three years, then there is no reason why hotels and airports cannot be ready either.