CHAT.MD

Poland and Ukraine have won the race to host the European Championships in 2012 after beating off bids from Italy and Croatia-Hungary.

UEFA overlooked favourites Italy, whose bid was overshadowed by last season's referee corruption scandal and their on-going problems with football-related crowd trouble.

The decision was taken by 12 members of UEFA's executive committee meeting in Cardiff.

Poland and Ukraine had staged an impressive presentation on Tuesday with Chelsea striker Andriy Shevchenko, Liverpool keeper Jerzy Dudek, world heavyweight boxing champions Vitali Klitschko, former pole vault Olympic champion Sergei Bubka and Ukraine president Victor Yushchenko all making appearances.

The victory for Poland and Ukraine signifies the first step in new UEFA president Michel Platini's plan to spread the benefits of football throughout Europe and not just the big nations.

It is even more surprising as there has been a match-fixing scandal in Poland, whose government was also warned by FIFA and UEFA about political interference in the Polish FA.

Four Ukrainian cities and six Polish venues have been lined up as host cities for 2012.

The four Ukrainian venues are Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kiev and Lviv while Gdansk, Krakow, Poznan, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Chorzow have been earmarked for games in Poland.