In Cardiff at 10:30 local time on Wednesday, Michel Platini took centre stage to announce the winning candidacy for the Euro 2012 Championship. The day before, each finalist (Hungary-Croatia; Italy; Poland-Ukraine) had one last chance to gather the votes necessary to win hosting rights at a closed presentation.

According to the UEFA representatives, all three presentations were excellent, and none of the applying countries deserved to lose. Italy were the bookies' favourites with the joint bid of Croatia and Hungary edging out the Ukraine-Poland candidacy.

Three minutes into his speech, Platini opened the envelope and revealed that UEFA chose the option least favoured by the bookies  - and Poland and Ukraine are set to host the event.

Italy’s representatives were shocked. Whilst many international newspapers were questioning their candidacy due to the infamous events of the past year, the Italian delegates in Cardiff pointed out that they do not believe that these negative aspects were major factors.

The legendary Dino Zoff was quick to say that they regard this as their failure, and that they should have taken the application procedure more seriously. Most of the criticism in Thursday’s Italian papers focused on how they had become too laid back once everyone was naming them the clear-cut favourites.

There were voices even before the announcement that UEFA needed to expand towards eastern Europe and would select either one of the joint-host options. In all fairness, while the Croatia-Hungary bid was hopeful that the most recent events in Ukraine would scare the governing body from selecting them, the selection here was a no-brainer. All four countries are badly in need of new stadiums and infrastructure in order to even come close to such events, having governmental assurances that all of these projects will be finished by the date of the opening ceremony. The Poland-Ukraine event would mean a home market of somewhere around 85 million people whilst Croatia and Hungary can account for around 15 million.

The Hungary-Croatia candidacy was also aware of the fact that the current level of Hungarian international football would be a major weak link. Whilst every other hosting candidate would be expected to be in the hunt for qualification for the latter stages, Hungary’s current FIFA ranking suggests that they have no business being near such an event. Following the announcement of the decision, many in Hungary felt that this was one of the main reasons for the failure of their candidacy.

The reactions in both Poland and the Ukraine were ones of sheer joy. Politicians pointed out that the event might mean just as much to their economy as it does to their football. When the delegates in Cardiff saw their country’s name written on the paper pulled out of Platini’s envelope, they started screaming and jumping in utter joy, not even waiting for it to be officially announced by the UEFA president.

I’m sure any of the five host countries would have done a marvellous job in 2012. It is up to the Poland-Ukraine duo to prove me right now. It is going to be an interesting event, and we already have a record factoid for the 2012 European Championship: The 2000 kilometres between Gdansk and Doneck is the biggest distance between host cities in the history of the competition.

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