2012 Euro has Schedules Ready for June

By Camilla Mancini

A week ago the schedule for the Euro 2012 was displayed at the Palace of Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine. The 14 qualified teams to the Group stage have been divided into four quite exigent groups. As we already knew Poland was automatically set up as A1 and Ukraine as D1, while Spain and the Netherlands were waiting with the rest to know which one would be their group. Well last Tuesday's evening we found out that the Netherlands has been placed as the head of the Group B while the World Champions are leading the Group C.

The draw started with Pot 1 and moved to Pot 4, calling out first Czech Republic that was drawn A4, Denmark became B2, Ireland C3 and France D3. The Pot 3 was next leaving Greece as A2, Portugal as B4, Croatia and Sweden as C4 and D2 respectively. Reaching the 18.00h in Kyiv all the members of the Pot 2 were impatient to find out their positions and the others were waiting nervously, since the Pot 2 had some of the strongest teams of the Euro. Finally they were settled like this: Russia A3, Germany B3, Italy C2 and England D4.

So on Group A we got Poland participating for the second time on the European Championship and Greece that carries the Euro 2004 title; these two nations are actually going to have the opening match on June 8th at 18.00 (local time) in Warsaw. The second fixture from Group A will be in Wroclaw that same day at 20.45CET, when Russia, the third winner from 2008, will play against Cezch Republic, that hasn't missed a championship since its debut in 1996.

The matches for the next day will be in charge of the teams from Group B, which by the way is probably going to be the toughest one. Starting on the evening at the Metalist Stadium in Kharkiv, the second team with the highest points on the UEFA's country coefficient ranking, the Netherlands, will be facing Denmark, which has been improving since 2009 moving from the 16th spot to the 10th. Later on Germany and Portugal will clash at Arena Lviv, in what's definitively going to be a very challenging encounter for the Portuguese that will have a rematch with their executioner from the 2008 Euro quarterfinals.

The Group C will have their first encounters in Poland on June 10th. The journey starts with the past two World Cup winners at Gdansk; Spain and Italy also met in the quarterfinals from the last Euro Cup in which the Reds won 4-2 in penalties. The night-game will confront the Irish Green Boys, which have been out of the tournament since 1988, with Croatia that on the contrary is qualifier for the third time in-a-row.

The last two fixtures of the opening round of the Group stage will take part at Donbass Arena in Donetsk and the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv respectively. First from Group D, is England, which hasn't been able to go beyond the 3rd place through their career in the competition and that will meet the twice champion France. Next, the experienced Sweden will visit the co-host, Ukraine that will be debuting on Monday 11th.

Six months is a lot of time to wait for this event, but at least it will give more chance to some of the squads to prepare for the toughest fixtures. The Group phase will run from June 8th to June 19th and it will have the four teams of each group confronting each other to qualify for the quarterfinals (21st -24th). Between June 27 and 28 the semifinals will be played and after two days of rest the final will take place in Kyiv on the 1st of July.