UEFA has officially settled on the location of the 2012 European Championships, following next year's alpine extravaganza being co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland, and it's going to be Poland and Ukraine in 2012. They beat out another joint bid from Croatia and Hungary, which is the second rejection for the Hungarians after they put in the Imperial bid with Austria for Euro'04, so maybe they can work out something with the Romanians for their next bite at the apple, although I'd expect Euro'16 to go to somebody in the north of Europe, like the Scandinavian or Celtic joint hosting bids that have been posited but never solidified in the last few years. The big losers are the Italians, who are bitching about it being a political decision to give the tournament to eastern Europe. Since the last time a tournament was held east of the Elbe was Euro'72 in Yugoslavia (and Italy hosted the World Cup in 1990) it was about time. The Italians didn't really have a shot given the complete crisis atmosphere in Italian football with the murdered policemen, games being played in empty stadia to avoid crowd violence, and the refereeing scandal, but they were apparently counting on the Euro as a way to shake money out of the government to renovate a lot of aging stadia, particularly in Torino. This could be the longterm decline of the game in Italy if amidst a sea of troubles, they were forced to do what English teams do: build their own facilities and charge the fans an arm and a leg to pay for it (it's actually cheaper to have a French ligue un season ticket and take the train to France every other weekend to see them than to go to games in London, plus you get to stroll down the boulevard with a baguette under your arm). Now Italy has to hope to beat out England, China, or the United States for the 2018 World Cup (2014 is supposedly a dead lock for Brazil, if they can get 10 modern stadiums built in time). The primary criticism of the Poland-Ukraine bid has been the poor infrastructure, particularly roads, and the hassle of the border crossing, but this may turn into a positive opportunity at a precarious time. Having Ukraine work with EU-oriented Poland on this project, and build transit links to their neighbor that the Poles will stretch into the EU, might build some bridges westward-looking leaders in Ukraine can build on... link Kiev and Warsaw and maybe you've got a highway from Donetsk to Berlin.
Coming up a little sooner, this year Venezuela hosts its first Copa America, the traditional South American championship. Venezuela has long been the milkman's kid of South American sports, being crazy for baseball and complete crap at soccer. (Oh by the way, Venezolanos, thanks for Johan Santana, sorry about flipping the lights off on El Presidente.) CONMEBOL, the organization of the 9 large South American countries that are actually good at soccer plus Venezuela (who have been getting better recently, and it's not like Bolivia was that great either), has decided to start rotating the tournament between all its members, as well as making it a quadrennial tournament like the Euro, so it's a pretty big deal. The thing is, with ten members, CONMEBOL needs a couple friends to make up the numbers, so they regularly invite Mexico, and recently they've invited whoever won the North American continental championship, which means the United States will be going to Venezuela. The way the brackets are set up for this 12-team tournament, the US has two shots at a quarterfinal game with the host, although the only likely one involves Venezuela winning their group and the US finishing as the 2nd best 3rd placed team (which is certainly possible). I think the US has a good shot at the quarterfinals, since we have Argentina to stomp on everybody in our group and keep the scores low, then Paraguay who sucked in the World Cup, and Colombia, who lost to a much less impressive US team at the Rose Bowl in their last tournament meeting in '94. Should the US finish 2nd, which is possible, the US probably meets Brazil and go home, but if they finish 3rd it's probably whoever came out on top between Uruguay and Venezuela, or between Ecuador and Mexico, meeting one of those pairs in the quarters and the other pair in the semifinal. Seriously, finish second, win a couple games against Urugay and Mexico, and the US has title shot against the winner of Brazil vs Argentina, playing for the whole enchilada in front of Hugo Chavez. If the US can make the semis, they'd probably get a 3rd place game against Brazil or Argentina in Caracas. So finish 3rd, get a little lucky, and the US can irritate the hell out of Hugo Chavez by showing up at some marquee games of his tournament. Maybe he and El Diablo can even get a friendly bet going as to who does better, and at least one of those two will have to publicly eat shit over it. Not likely that it will all fall into place, but don't squash my dream.
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