The draw for the 2012 European Championships was made today at the Palace of Arts in Kiev , Ukraine. England in Group D will kick off their Euro 2012 campaign against France in Donetsk on 11 June, followed by games against Sweden in Kiev on 15 June, and then face hosts Ukraine again at the 51,504-capacity Donbass Arena in Donetsk on 19 June. The Republic of Ireland in Group C will face Croatia in Poznan on 10 June, followed by World and European champions Spain in the Baltic port city of Gdansk on 14 June before ending their group games with a match versus Italy in Poznan on 18 June. The four groups are as follows: Group A Poland Greece Russia Czech Republic Group B Holland Denmark Germany Portugal Group C Spain Italy Republic of Ireland Croatia Group D Ukraine Sweden France England Soccer - Capello expects tough finale England head coach Fabio Capello thinks that Euro 2012 will be even harder to win than the World Cup in South Africa two years ago. Capello's reign as England boss will end after next year's finals in Poland and Ukraine, with England 10/1 with bet365 to send the Italian off on a winning note. However, Capello believes that his side will face a massive test of their mettle, with the likes of reigning champions Spain (5/2) and Germany (3/1) among the favourites. Capello said: "It will be stronger because if you look at the groups and all the teams - particularly the three European teams who reached the World Cup semi-finals - the technical level is at the top, the organisation of the teams is at the top. "Also some teams who didn't play well at the World Cup will now be back at the top. "Portugal, France and Italy will be better. It will be a really tough tournament." Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

The final lineup for next summer's European Championship in Poland & Ukraine is now set after tonight's playoff second legs, with a strong field of sixteen heading for Eastern Europe. There were no winning fightbacks following the first legs and Portugal, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Ireland and Croatia all advanced to Euro 2012, eliminating respectively Bosnia & Herzogovina, Montenegro, Estonia and Turkey. The sixteen qualifiers are thus: Poland, Ukraine , Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, France, England, Portugal, Denmark, Croatia, Sweden, Eire, Czech Republic, Greece and Russia. All the big guns are there, and Croatia, Sweden, Russia and Ireland make the boat having missed out on the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. The Netherlands' Klaas-Jan Huntelaar finished as top scorer in Europe with twelve goals, followed by Germany's Miroslav Klose with nine. England were the best supported team with an average home crowd of 77,000, followed by France with 65,000. The draw for the finals takes place in Kiev on the 2nd of December and the tournament itself is from the 8th of June until the 1st of July. *** * World Champions Spain 's lukewarm friendly form continued when they scraped a 2-2 draw in Costa Rica. Trailing 2-0 at the interval, David Silva pulled one back in the 83rd minute and David Villa spared their blushes with a leveller three minutes into injury time. As with Saturday's defeat to England, Spain fielded a full-strength team for the clash in San Jose, Costa Rica. In other European friendlies, Germany blanked the Netherlands 3-0 in Hamburg, Italy lost 0-1 to Uruguay in Rome, England beat Sweden for the first time since 1968, 1-0 in London, while France drew 0-0 at home to Belgium. The USA won 3-2 in Slovenia while there were home wins for both Euro 2012 hosts: Poland beat Hungary and Ukraine Austria, both by 2-1 scorelines. * Argentina overturned a half-time deficit to beat Colombia 2-1 in their 2014 World Cup qualifier in Barranquilla, Colombia. Lionel Messi equalised Dorlan Pabon's opener on the hour mark and Sergio Aguero bagged the winner with five minutes to play. In another CONMEBOL qualifier, Ecuador beat Peru 2-0 in Quito. * Asian giants Japan and South Korea both lost in 2014 qualifying tonight - Nippon lost 1-0 away to North Korea, while the Korean Republic lost 2-1 away to Lebanon. Australia won 1-0 in Thailand, China won 4-0 in Singapore and Iran won 4-1 in Indonesia. There were also qualifiers among the lesser nations of Africa and the CONCACAF region. * In the pick of tonight's African friendlies, Nigeria beat Zambia 2-0, Ghana beat Gabon 2-1 and Zimbabwe beat neighbours South Africa 2-1. (c) Sean O'Conor and Soccerphile Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

The English FA have announced that the England team at Euro 2012 will be based in the historic city of Krakow in Poland . The team will stay at the city centre Hotel Stary close to Rynek Square in the Old Town district and train at the rather dilapidated Hutnik Municipality Stadium on the city's outskirts. Krakow is Poland's second largest city after Warsaw, the capital, and is Poland's major cultural and artistic centre. Krakow is not one of Poland's Euro 2012 venue cities and is a five hour train journey (with no beer on sale) to Wroclaw. Tags Euro 2012 football

The draw for the Euro 2012 qualification play offs were made in the Polish city of Krakow on Thursday. The full draw is: Bosnia-Herzegovina v Portugal Estonia v Ireland Czech Republic v Montenegro Turkey v Croatia First leg matches are scheduled for November 11 or 12 with the second leg to be played on November 15. Tags World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

We now know twelve of the sixteen finalists for next summer's European Championship in Poland & Ukraine , with play-offs for the four remaining places taking place in mid-November. The hosts will be joined by Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Five of the play-off contenders are East European - Bosnia/Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia and Montenegro, along with Eire, Portugal and Turkey . The draw is on Thursday in Poland. Some names missing the boat include Norway , whom Portugal pipped on goal difference in Group H, and Switzerland , who had beaten Spain at the 2010 World Cup, lost to fast-improving Wales in their final game, allowing Montenegro to overtake; Belgium , despite the talents of Eden Hazard and others, drew three and lost three in Group A and were beaten to second place by Turkey, while 2010 qualifiers Serbia and Slovenia are on the quayside after Estonia's impressive run to the playoffs from Group C. 2010 World Cup finalists Spain and the Netherlands, along with Germany, still appear the teams to beat next summer, but the other nations would do well to recall the 2004 tournament in Portugal, when unfancied Greece came from nowhere to win it. -Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

Michel Platini has said he is at last confident Ukraine can host Euro 2012 . After several 'last chance' warnings over the past three years, the UEFA boss can tear a few fewer hairs out now the four stadia do seem to be on track for next summer. "A year ago, we were deciding whether to leave four or two cities," Platini told reporters on a tour of Kharkiv. "And today we have four cities." "There are no serious problems in preparing for Euro 2012," he continued, "but there are many minor tasks and problems that need to be solved." For Platini, a successful Euro 2012 is crucial to his reputation as an organiser of big soccer tournaments as he continues his silent campaign for the FIFA Presidency at some point in the future. The Frenchman has found the two hosts' lack of infrastructure and slow construction progress compared to western European nations an ongoing headache, and has constantly had to threaten them with being stripped of hosting rights. Spain was the first nation touted as a replacement back in 2008, when World Soccer's Keir Radnedge boldly announced neither Poland nor Ukraine would host Euro 2012. Then Germany entered the picture, either as sole host or as joint organiser with Poland. Now it is clear UEFA is not turning back and is throwing its cards on the table with the two unknown East European hosts. By rights the tournament should have been Italy's, but the calciopoli scandal and an upsurge in high-profile hooliganism let the duo in through the back door. It promises to be a unique European Championship, a foretaste perhaps of the 2018 World Cup in neighbouring Russia. The cheap transport promised to fans facing extraordinarily long journeys between venues (Gdansk to Donetsk is 933 miles/1502km) yet to materialise. Next month Platini visits Poland to inspect their venues, with the opening date of Warsaw's new arena still up in the air. (c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile UEFA EURO 2012 8th June -1st July 2012 VENUES Poland Warsaw 58,224 (opening game and semi-final) Gdansk 44,636 Poznan 43,090 Wroclaw 44,416 Ukraine Kiev 63,195 (semi-final and final) Donetsk 50,055 Kharkiv 35,721 Lviv 34, 915 Qualifiers Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Italy and ten others to be decided. Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

The night was foggy and the environs of the Royal Bafokeng Stadium poorly lit. We had just finished a nightmare journey to reach the Eng land v U SA clash at last summer's World Cup on-time, though little did we know the absurdly long drive to Rustenburg from Johannesburg would be as nothing compared to the never-ending story that was the trip back. Two hours after the final whistle we were still waiting to leave the car park, or rather the strip of wasteland commandeered to house the many vehicles used by visiting fans at the 42,000 venue; Rustenburg lacked a railway station. What was FIFA thinking handing the World Cup to a place like this, I thought. A veritable nightmare for visiting fans, by some margin the most inconvenient of the six World Cup finals I had attended. Then I got my answer - a military helicopter, searchlights beaming through the gloom, hovered in to land. The doors opened and a posse of security ushered US Vice-President Joe Biden into the stadium. Biden doubtless had a five-star experience of the W orld Cup like all FIFA dignitaries did, and the TV feed did its job in pumping the games into people's homes across the globe. But what about the real fans, those of us who had shelled out to be there in the South African winter in person. Did anyone care about our experience of the World Cup? Talking of winter, and in South Africa the thermometer dipped below zero on many nights, a winter World Cup in the Middle East in 2022 looks ever likelier now the International Players' Union has come out in favour of it. FIFPRO has added to calls from Franz Beckenbauer and Michel Platini, endorsed by Sepp Blatter and Jerome Valcke, for the Qatar tournament to be shifted to the European winter months, presumably January when the African Nations Cup takes place to avoid th at continent's oppressive summer heat. "Tourists are advised not to travel to Qatar in the summer months," said FIFPRO's spokesman Tijs Tummers. "Inhabitants of Qatar leave the country en masse during this period." Tummers went on to note how supporters would suffer in the 50C midday heat "The summer months in Qatar do not provide suitable conditions for a festival of football." Did someone mention supporters? Those quaint old aficionados who pay an arm and a leg to support multi-million pound stars across the world. Since when were they a cons ideration for the game's decision-makers in Switzerland? South Africa was a challenge for them: The distances between venues was vast, the public transport next to non-existent and the road network wholly inadequate for a show of the World Cup's magnitude. The clogged one-lane highway in and out of Rustenburg will live long in this European fan's memory. Brazil, the World Cup host in 2014, has equally vast distances and poor transport options compared to recent European and Far-Eastern host nation s, plus a crime problem at least as worrying as South Africa's. 2018 host Russia has more enormous distances to cover in addition to a train network below Western European standards, problems shared by Euro 2012 hosts Poland and Ukraine. And then there is Qatar. The fans, the lifeblood of the game after all, as it is they who provide the lion's share of club revenues in their ticket purchases, have become the last thought, if considered at all, by the game's decision makers. What visiting this summer's World Cup finals, and witnessing Russia and Qatar win the right to host future ones confirmed to me was that TV rights, sponsor revenue, FIFA politics, moneyed suitors and geo-political pulls have left the poor fans, the real ones that is, facing more mammoth journeys and myriad inconveniences in their unwavering, yet increasingly unrequited love for the Beautiful Game. (c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

In a thrilling round of Euro 2012 qualifying games , Portugal defeated Denmark in Porto to kick start their faltering campaign. Germany easily overcame Turkey 3-0 in Berlin while Montenegro kept their 100% record with a win over Switzerland to set up an intriguing tie with England at Wembley on Tuesday. World and European champions Spain beat Lithuania 3-1 in Salamanca, the Netherlands won 1-0 away in Moldova while Italy were held to a scoreless draw with Northern Ireland in Belfast in Group C. Scotland lost 1-0 to the Czech Republic in Prague, Ireland lost 3-2 at home to Russia to throw the group wide open, while Wales lost 1-0 in Cardiff to Bulgaria in Group G and have yet to register a point. Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football results

In yesterday's round of Euro 2012 qualifying games Portugal lost in Norway, while France put their qualification back on track with a win on the road in Sarajevo against Bosnia. The Netherlands won 2-1 in Rotterdam against Finland, England won 3-1 in Switzerland and Italy hit 5 in Florence against the hapless Faroe Islands. Scotland squeezed past Liechtenstein at Hampden in Group I, Ireland won in Dublin 3-1 against Andorra but Slovakia caused an upset with a 1-0 win in Moscow versus Russia. Previous Euro 2012 qualifying results Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football+results

In an exiting round of Euro 2012 qualifying games , the shock of the evening's games was France's 1-0 home loss to Belarus in Group D. The most exciting match was Portugal's 4-4 draw with Cyprus in Guimaraes, where the visitors came back to gain a last-gasp point. The big teams, with the exception of France, all had comfortable wins: world champions Spain cruised to a 4-0 win in Liechtenstein, the Netherlands won 5-0 away in San Marino, England defeated Bulgaria 4-0 at Wembley behind a Jermaine Defoe hat-trick, and Italy came from behind to beat Estonia 1-2. Scotland were held 0-0 by Lithuania by Group I, Ireland defeated Armenia away 1-0 in Group B, Wales lost 1-0 to Montenegro in Group G and Northern Ireland won on the road against Slovenia 1-0 in Group C. Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football+results