At Euro-2012 Fronts
Western Front
At the Western front the situation is more or less stable and clear, at least for the upcoming six months: the fate of Euro-2012 depends on its Ukrainian and Polish organizers. Before the latest meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee there had been certain apprehensions about possible sanctions against Ukraine and Poland – up to their disqualification.
Well-informed sources knew that the committee was very serious about the co-hosts but hoped for business-like talks on the division of responsibilities and optimization of work. UEFA did confirm its plan to hold Euro-2012 in Ukraine and Poland but laid down a number of conditions that looked like ultimatums. [Read more →]
Billionaire Serhiy Taruta could fund Lviv soccer stadium project
Serhiy Taruta, the billionaire who co-owns Ukraine’s leading steel group, Industrial Union of Donbass, is ready to invest some 85 million euros in the construction of a brand new soccer stadium in Lviv, city officials announced late in October.
Serhiy Taruta
Lviv is one of several Ukrainian cities earmarked to host the Union of European Football Associations games during the championship matches that will be co-hosted with Poland. The construction and reconstruction of stadiums at the other cities is well under way and backed by Ukraine’s billionaires. Soccer-crazed Ukrainian businessmen are backing stadium projects in other host cities, including Donetsk, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk. In Kyiv, reconstruction efforts at the city’s main stadium have commenced.
But Lviv has struggled to find backing for a new stadium. News of possible backing from Taruta comes weeks after an Austrian construction group, Alpine Bau, announced it had backed out of the project to build a stadium in Lviv. City officials also recently announced that two foreign companies had agreed to take part in developing the new stadium: Italy’s Codest and Spain’s Horwath Art Consulting.