EURO 2012 kicks off today
KYIV, June 8 /UKRINFORM/. The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship gets underway on Friday, June 8, in Ukraine and Poland.
The official opening ceremony of the tournament will be held in Warsaw before the first group stage match with the hosts Poland to take on Greece. Also on the first day of the tournament in Wroclaw Russia face the Czech Republic.
The EURO 2012 games will take place in four Polish cities - Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk and Poznan - and four Ukrainian - Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv and Kharkiv.
The final match of the European football championship will be held at the Olimpiyskiy NSC in Kyiv, Sunday, July 1. It has been reported earlier that all 16 teams participating in EURO 2012 had already arrived to the place of their stay in Poland and Ukraine.
Among the Ukrainian cities, the first matches of the tournament will be hosted on June 9 by Lviv and Kharkiv. The Ukrainian team will play the first game against Sweden on June 11 in Kyiv at the Olimpiyskiy NSC. Then Oleh Blokhin's squad will face two games vs France and England in Donetsk.
The 16 participating teams will play a total of 31 matches.
EURO 2012 will be the last championship with 16 teams participating in the finals. As from EURO 2016, the number of teams will rise to 24.
The mascots of the current tournament are twin football players Slavek and Slavko.
The official song of the European Championship is Endless Summer by Oceana.
The official ball of the tournament is Tango 12. This is the sixth ball in the model range of Tango. The first ball appeared at the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina. Tango's previous models were used at the three past European championships.
It is expected that the games of the continental tournament in Ukraine and Poland will be attended by some 1.4 million viewers.
The current European football championship, which is considered the most prestigious football competition in Europe at the level of national teams and the third in the world after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, will be the 14th in a row. The first European championship took place in 1960, and has been held every four years.
Poland and Ukraine won the race to host the 2012 European Championship after beating off bids from Italy and Croatia-Hungary in April 2007.
On December 2, 2011 Kyiv hosted the draw for the EURO 2012 finals:
As a result:
Group A - Poland, Greece, Russia, Czech Republic; matches in Warsaw and Wroclaw
Group B - Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Portugal; matches in Lviv and Kharkiv
Group C - Spain, Italy, Ireland, Croatia; matches in Gdansk and Poznan
Group D - Ukraine, Sweden, France, England; matches in Donetsk and Kyiv.
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