EURO 2012

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, will be the 14th European Championship for national football teams sanctioned by UEFA. The final tournament will be hosted by Poland and Ukraine between 8 June and 1 July 2012. This bid was chosen by UEFA's Executive Committee in 2007.
 The final tournament features sixteen nations, the last European Championship to do so (from Euro 2016 onward, there will be 24 finalists). Qualification was contested by 51 nations between August 2010 and November 2011 to join the two host nations in the tournament

  
Host EURO 2012


The joint Poland–Ukraine bid was chosen by a vote of the UEFA Executive Committee at a meeting in Cardiff on 18 April 2007. This bid defeated the other shortlisted bids from Italy and Croatia–Hungary, becoming the third successful joint bid for the European Championship, after those of Belgium–Netherlands (2000) and Austria–Switzerland (2008)

Participating teams
 The finals will feature sixteen national teams, as has been the format since 1996. Some European football associations were in favour of expanding the tournament to 24 teams, although the number of UEFA members had hardly increased since the last tournament extension in 1996 (53 in April 2006 compared to 48 for Euro 1996).In April 2007, UEFA's Executive Committee formally decided against an expansion for 2012.

 Twelve of the sixteen finalists participated at the previous tournament in 2008, with England and Denmark, who participated in 2004, returning after missing the 2008 edition. The Republic of Ireland return after an absence of 24 years, making only their second appearance at a European finals. Hosts Ukraine, make their debut as an independent nation, having previously participated as part of the Soviet Union.

 The sixteen finalists who will participate in the final tournament are:

•  Croatia
•  Czech Republic
•  Denmark
•  England
•  France
•  Germany
•  Greece
•  Italy
•  Netherlands
•  Poland (co-hosts)
•  Portugal
•  Republic of Ireland
•  Russia
•  Spain (title holders)
•  Sweden
•  Ukraine (co-hosts) 

Final draw

 In the draw procedure, each of the four groups had one team drawn from each pot. It also determined which place in the group teams drawn from Pots 2–4 would take (i.e. A2, A3 or A4) to create the match schedule. For logistical reasons, Poland were assigned in advance to A1, and Ukraine to D1.The balls were drawn by four former players who have each been part of European Championship winning teams: Horst Hrubesch, Marco van Basten, Peter Schmeichel and Zinedine Zidane.

GROUP A
Ukraine  Poland  Spain  Netherland        GROUP B  Italy  England  Russia  Germany         GROUP C   Croatia  Greece  Portugal  Sweden       GROUP D    Denmark  France  Czech Republic  Republic of Ireland  Match ball