All You Need to Know Euro 2012 Draw.

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Where Is It Taking Place?

UEFA are hosting the draw at the Ukraine Palace of Arts in Kiev.

According to Wikipedia, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias and Luciano Pavarotti are the among the notable performers to have graced the venue in the past.

Who Will Be There?

UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino will be conducting the draw, with the help of TV presenters lga Freimut and Piotr Sobczynski.

UEFA tell us entertainment will be provided by "the P. Virsky Ukrainian National Folk Dance Ensemble, Ukrainian singerJamala and a surprise international artist."

We should also expect the national managers of each of the 16 qualified teams, along with a host of legendary names from the tournament's previous editions. The Euro 2012 motto is "creating history together", and the organisers have hence invite a collection of former stars.

How will the draw work?

There are four groups of four to be drawn, with each to comprise of one team from each of the four seeding pots.

Groups A, B, C and D will all consist of  1 x Pot A team, 1 x Pot B team, 1 x Pot C team and 1 x Pot D team.

Pot 1 teams will be drawn first, followed by Pot 4, then Pot 3, and finally Pot 2 to make up the groups. This means those in Pot 2 are in for the most agonising wait (not good news for England fans).

We already know Poland are the Pot 1 team in Group A, and Ukraine the Pot 1 team in Group D. The hosts have been guaranteed top seeding and a place in the group played out in their home city.

What Are the Seedings?

Aside from the hosts, who automatically go as Pot 1 seeds, the remaining 14 teams have been ranked using the UEFA National Team Coefficient. Here are the pots.

Pot 1 - Poland (Group A), Ukraine (Group D), Spain, Netherlands

Pot 2 - Germany, Italy, England, Russia

Pot 3 - Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden

Pot 4 - Denmark, France, Czech Republic, Republic of Ireland

Group of Death?

As with all draws these days, we must address the possibility of a 'Group of Death'.

It's highly unlikely, but we could potentially see a group containing the behemoths of Spain, Germany, Portugal and France.

Those are arguably the strongest teams in their respective pots, so teams will be desperately hoping to avoid them.

Group of Eternal Life?

According to the UEFA coefficient, here the weakest teams in their respective pots.

Pot 1 - Poland

Pot 2 - Russia

Pot 3 - Sweden

Pot 4 - Republic of Ireland

This would suggest the best draw for any team is to find yourself accompanied by three of these in a group. As a caveat, I'd make the case for Poland getting to play in front of partisan crowd, Russia having lost just once in 10 qualifiers, and Republic of Ireland riding on a wave of national hysteria.

Sweden were so bad against England at Wembley I can't find anything good to say about them.

A Random Prediction

There's really no point of this final slide, other than to entertain myself with a wild guess at the draw. Oh, and to illustrate once again the fact that each group will consist of seeds from pots 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Group A - POLAND,GERMANY, PORTUGAL, DENMARK

Group B - SPAIN, RUSSIA, CROATIA, SWEDEN

Group C - NETHERLANDS, ENGLAND, FRANCE, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

Group D - UKRAINE, ITALY, GREECE, CZECH REPUBLIC

Source: Bleacher Report

EURO finals draw seedings unveiled

Big day next Friday ... very excited to know which pool my two favorite countries (Spain and Netherlands) will be!!!

Spain, the Netherlands and co-hosts Poland and Ukraine are top seeds for the finals draw at 18.00CET on Friday in Kyiv and UEFA.com will have full coverage in our DrawCentre.

UEFA has announced the seedings for the UEFA EURO 2012 finals draw at the Palace of Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine at 18.00CET (19.00 local time) on Friday 2 December. UEFA.com will have full coverage direct from the Ukrainian capital from Thursday morning in our DrawCentre with video, stats and live updates.

The 16 teams will been drawn into four groups of four teams each (Groups A to D).  Four seeding pots will be created, with the host associations Poland and Ukraine being top seeds. Poland will be automatically placed in Group A as A1, Ukraine in Group D as D1.

The reigning champions Spain will be placed in Pot 1, together with the Netherlands, the team with the highest national team coefficient, as established at the conclusion of the play-off matches.

The other 12 qualifiers have been allocated to the remaining three pots according to their respective coefficients.

Pot 1: Spain, Netherlands
Pot 2: Germany, Italy, England, Russia
Pot 3: Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden
Pot 4: Denmark, France, Czech Republic, Republic of Ireland

Full coefficient list

The draw will start with Pot 1 in order to fill position one in Groups B and C. The draw will continue with Pot 4, from which a team will be allocated to each group consecutively, from Group A to Group D. This procedure will then be repeated for Pot 3 and finally for Pot 2.

The position of each team within its group (2, 3 or 4) will also be determined during the draw.

UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino will conduct the draw, and the ceremony will be hosted by Olga Freimut and Piotr Sobczynski – two renowned TV presenters in the UEFA EURO 2012 host countries. The show will include three entertainment acts: the P. Virsky Ukrainian National Folk Dance Ensemble, Ukrainian singer Jamala and a surprise international artist.

Furthermore, and supporting the motto 'Creating History Together', UEFA has invited legendary players from all previous editions of the tournament to participate in the show. In addition, the official match ball of UEFA EURO 2012 will be unveiled during the ceremony.

The draw will be shown live by more than 70 broadcast partners, covering more than 150 territories around the world.

Source: UEFA.com

Tomasz Mirosław Kuszczak Biograf

manchesterunited-fansclub.blogspot

Thomasz Kuszczak, Biograf, Man Utd - Born in Krosno Odrzańskie, Poland, Kuszczak joined Germany's Hertha BSC in 2000, spending a year with their reserve team before being promoted to the first team in 2001. He subsequently spent three seasons as the third-choice goalkeeper at the club, behind Gábor Király and Christian Fiedler, and failed to make a single appearance in the Bundesliga. He was out of contract with Hertha when he was signed by the then-West Bromwich Albion manager Gary Megson on 14 July 2004.

Kuszczak made his debut in a Premier League match against Arsenal on 17 September 2006, and he earned the Manchester United fans' respect when he saved an early Gilberto Silva penalty. He could not, however, save United from a 1-0 defeat, when Emmanuel Adebayor scored the late winner.

Although Kuszczak didn't play enough Premier League games in the 2006-2007 season, he received a winners medal by special application to the Premier League. On 2 July 2007, Manchester United announced that the permanent transfer had been completed, for a fee of £2.125 million.

Due to Dutch keeper Edwin van der Sar's continued good form and Ben Foster's knee injury, Kuszczak was named Manchester United's number 2 for the 2007-08 season. During an interview in May 2007 Kuszczak stated that he wanted one day to become the number 1 at Manchester United.


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