Football: Poland aims to reap rewards from Euro 2012

(WROCLAW) - Just six months before kick-off in Euro 2012, Poland is already looking far beyond the tournament as it eyes the long-term benefits of hosting the football showcase.

As home fans cross their fingers that Poland will clear the group stage, organisers have their gaze locked firmly on the off-pitch impact on this nation of 38 million.

"This is a fantastic chance," Wojciech Folejowski, operations director at organising body PL.2012, told an economic-focused football conference in the southwestern city of Wroclaw.

The quadrennial, 16-nation European championships traditionally draw hundreds of thousands of fans and a huge global television audience.

"It will be crucial for our image," said Folejowski, who is supervising a vast array of projects, from stadiums and highways to airports and hotels.

Euro 2012 kicks off next June 8 when Poland face Greece in Warsaw, and ends on July 1 with the final in Kiev, capital of co-host Ukraine.

Other matches in Group A, which also involves Russia and the Czech Republic, will take place in Wroclaw.

"We've got 183 days until the first whistle," Juliusz Gluski of Euro 2012 Polska, the local arm of European football's governing body UEFA, said Wednesday.

"The next few months are going to be a time of intensive work."

In 2007, UEFA caught pundits out by picking Poland and Ukraine as hosts over favourites Italy, opting to test the water behind the former Iron Curtain for the first time.

The communist era may lie two decades in the past, but Poland and, to a greater extent, Ukraine have faced massive infrastructure challenges and have been bedevilled by doubters.

Warsaw city hall's Marta Brzegowa said the "Barcelona effect" was high in Poland's mind.

The term is used by economists who see the 1992 Olympics host as an example of the fruits of profile-raising via sport.

With most fans unlikely to have been to the region before, making the right impression is crucial to longer-term tourism revenues.

"We're pushing to the final hurdle," said Brzegowa, reeling off projects including a shake-up of urban transport.

Wroclaw counterpart Hanna Domagala underlined: "The matches are only the start."

Poland's other Euro 2012 cities are Gdansk on the Baltic and Poznan in the west. They will host Group C, made up of reigning champions Spain, plus Italy, Ireland and Croatia.

Over the border, Group D comprises Ukraine, Sweden, France and England, while Group B involves Holland, Denmark, Germany and Portugal.

Some Poles bemoan the fact that most Western fan-magnet teams -- and higher-spending supporters -- will be in Ukraine.

Using spending and fan-number averages, the newspaper Fakt estimated that supporter outlays in Poland could be 800 million zloty (179 million euros, $240 million), half Ukraine's tally.

But Folejowski noted Poland will have two quarter-finals and one semi-final, likely to feature the heavyweights.

"The Dutch, Germans or Swedes could end up here anyway," he said.

Euro 2012 means far more than image-burnishing or fans' wallets, however.

"It's sped up infrastructure projects by three to five years," PL.2012 boss Marcin Herra recently told AFP.

Euro 2012-related investment in Poland is 90 billion zloty.

Ninety percent is public money, with around half of that from the European Union -- 2004 entrant Poland can tap funds to help poorer members catch up.

Officials underline that most projects are not sport-related -- less than five percent of spending is on stadiums -- and that the lion's share is for transport which needed an overhaul to spur the economy.

Productivity gains should add 2.0 percent to Poland's gross domestic product over 2008-2020, analysts estimate, underlining that modest growth is still growth.

Poland has been the only member of the 27-nation EU to keep growing during the economic crisis, and there are suggestions that Euro 2012-linked projects may have acted as a stimulus programme in all but name.