Watch Euro 2012 online
Watch Euro 2012 online football games HD video.
Watch UEFA Euro 2012 live online on PC, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Android and laptop.
The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, will be the 14th European Championship for national football teams organised by UEFA.
Watch Euro 2012 live. The final tournament will be hosted byPoland andUkraine between 8 June and 1 July 2012. It is the first time that either nation has hosted the tournament. This bid was chosen by UEFA’s Executive Committee in 2007.
It’s leader and perhaps the most gifted player, worldwide, of his generation, Zinedine Zidane, was hailed by many as a symbol of a new France, given the country’s highest medal, the Legion D’Honneur, and even touted as a possible future president by some giddy fans. But sons of Algerian janitors don’t typically become presidents ofFrancedespite the country’s principles of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. In fact, they’re not particularly integrated into French society.
Zidane, of course, was a more complex character, who didn’t see himself, first and foremost as French.”It’s hard to explain but I have a need to play intensely every day, to fight every match hard,” he told an interviewer. “And this desire never to stop fighting is something else I learnt in the place where I grew up. And, for me, the most important thing is that I still know who I am. Every day I think about where I come from and I am still proud to be who I am: first, a Kabyle [a Berber region ofAlgeria] from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, and then a Frenchman.”
ButFrance’s fraught politics of immigration began to impinge on the game during the ensuing 12 years,with violent clashes in the ghetto suburbs aroundParis,France’s national anthem being booed by crowds of young Algerian- and Tunisian-Frenchmen in international games, and not being sung by all the players on the team, either.
The racism may be more pronounced in Ukrainian football. Their national squad has no immigrants, even though the domestic league is dominated by foreigners — Dinamo Kiev’s squad has five Brazilians, three Nigerians and a Morrocan; Shakhtar Donetsk has 8 Brazilians (9 if Eduardo is counted) and a Nigerian. Metallist Kharkiv has just four Brazilians, but six Argentinians and a Senegalese. And so on.
That’s a situation bemoaned in 2006 by national coach Oleg Blokhin, a legendary player on the Soviet national team in the early ’80s who will once again coachUkraineat Euro 2012. “The more Ukrainians there are playing in the national league, the more examples there are for the young generation,” Blokhin said. ”Let them learn from Blokhin or [Andriy] Shevchenko and not some zumba-bumba whom they took off a tree, gave two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league.”
If that’s how the national team coach expresses himself, it ought to be no wonder that the families of black players fromEnglandare fearful about taking their chances with the neo-Nazis ofUkraine.
The Foreign Office advises travelling fans of African-Caribbean or Asian descent to take “extra care”. And the FA estimates that only 5,000Englandfans will travel toKievandDonetsk. This compares with the 10,000 who visitedSouth Africa, much further away, in 2010 and the 100,000 who descended onGermanyin 2006.
Others are queuing up to boycott too. The German chancellor Angela Merkel and assorted EU chiefs are to shunUkrainein protest at the treatment and imprisonment of the opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who was beaten up in April while being transferred from prison to hospital.Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych has so far obdurately refused to bow to EU pressure.
Uefa’s president Michael Platini, meanwhile, has complained of rip-off hotel prices inUkraine, alleging “bandits and crooks” have muscled in. There is an acute shortage of hotel rooms inDonetsk, the gritty eastern mining town next toRussiawhereEnglandwill playFranceon 11 June andUkraineon 19 June.Englandhave snubbedDonetsk’s world-class facilities to base in the Polish city ofKrakow, offending many.
If this were not bad enough, on 21 May topless activists from the group Femen grabbed the championship trophy during its whistle-stop tour of Ukrainian cities; they claim the tournament will boost prostitution and the country’s already booming sex industry.
Criscito, who is under investigation on charges of “sports fraud” whilst a Genoa player two seasons ago, would appear to be the first major casualty of the scandal since he has been dropped from the squad for the European Championships because of his alleged involvement.
Nor is Criscito the only big named involved in this Cremona-based investigation which first began back in November2010 inthe wake of strange happenings after an Italian third divison game between Cremonese and Paganese.
Among the 19 people arrested yesterday is the current Lazio captain and Italian international, Stefano Mauri, whilst Antonio Conte, coach of newly crowned Italian champions Juventus, is under investigation in relation to the 2010-2011 season when he coached Serie B sideSienato a first division promotion.
Processing your request, Please wait....
