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.
