EURO focus for Executive Committee
Sunday, October 3, 2010
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Belarus and its capital Minsk are gearing up to host the latest UEFA Executive Committee meeting on Monday, with an update on UEFA EURO 2012 preparations a key issue.
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Belarus and its capital Minsk are getting ready to host the latest UEFA Executive Committee meeting on Monday, with an update on UEFA EURO 2012 preparations a key item on the agenda.
Work on staging the final round of European football's blue-riband national team competition in Poland and Ukraine in two years' time is gathering pace, and the committee, chaired by UEFA president Michel Platini, will discuss the state of preparations for the tournament, including the match schedule. In the latest development last week, the UEFA member associations were issued with a dossier giving them a choice of 38 potential team bases for the finals.
UEFA EURO 2012 matches will be played at eight venues – Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw (Poland) and Donetsk, Lviv, Kharkiv and Kyiv (Ukraine) between 8 June and 1 July 2012. The final round will be the last to feature 16 teams before the tournament field is increased to 24 for the UEFA EURO 2016 tournament in France.
At the Minsk meeting, the host associations will be appointed for several final tournaments: the UEFA European Under-17 Championships in 2012 and 2013, the UEFA European Under-19 Championships in 2012 and 2013, the UEFA European Women's Championship in 2013, and the UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championships in 2012 and 2013.
New members will also be proposed for the UEFA Coaching Convention. The convention's aim is, among other things, to set a benchmark for UEFA's 53 member associations to meet, both to protect the coaching profession and to smooth the way for the free movement of qualified coaches within Europe in accordance with European law.
The UEFA Grassroots Charter continues to flourish, and the committee will be asked to ratify new members of the charter. UEFA's Grassroots Charter, created in 2004, represents an endorsement of national associations' grassroots programmes. UEFA motivates and supports the national associations in developing their programmes.
The Executive Committee will also hear reports on the activities of the various UEFA committees that have held recent meetings.
