Italy was widely expected to win the Uefa vote in Cardiff,
with another joint bid from Croatia and Hungary also in the
running. However, Italy's bid was overshadowed by last season's
referee corruption scandal and on-going problems with
football-related crowd trouble. It will be the first time that
either Poland or Ukraine has hosted a major football
championship.
Italy blamed recent chaos for the failure of their bid to host the
2012 European soccer championship on Wednesday. The past 12 months
have been one of the most turbulent periods in the history of
Italian football, with a Serie A match-fixing scandal last year
followed in February by the death of a policeman in rioting before
a Sicilian derby between Catania and Palermo.
The image was tarnished further this month when police lashing out
with batons at Manchester United fans during a Champions League tie
against Roma. "I'm not surprised this has happened," the president
of the Italian Football League, Antonio Matarrese, told Italy's La7
television station from Cardiff after European governing body UEFA
announced Poland and Ukraine as the successful co-hosts.
"We are coming out of one of the most terrible tragedies in the
history of Italian football," he added, referring to the death of
police inspector Filippo Raciti outside Catania's Massimino
stadium. "UEFA has made a political and a sporting choice, they've
given a chance to two countries that have only recently entered
into the European footballing family," she told La7. "Of course I'm
disappointed. I still believe the dossier we submitted was a good
one, but now we need to congratulate the winners and push ahead
with our own programme of reforms and rebuilding of Italian
football.
