LOC learns lessons from EURO 2012

A meeting took place in Moscow on 15 October between senior officials from the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Local Organising Committee, led by CEO Alexey Sorokin, and representatives from Ukraine's UEFA EURO 2012 Organising Committee, led by tournament director Markiyan Lubkivskyi. Lubkivskyi was in Moscow to talk about the organisers'experiences of preparing for EURO 2012 in Ukraine. "I'm really pleased with the meeting, and I'm sure this won't be the last time we all meet up," said Markiyan Lubkivskyi at the end of the meeting. "From all the experience we gained in organising EURO 2012 in Ukraine, the main thing I'd single out is that you can't afford to waste even so much as a day as you prepare for a tournament. You have to pay close attention to issues such as security and accommodation for World Cup visitors and fans, and from the very start you have to monitor the construction of facilities for the tournament to make sure they meet FIFA requirements. "Just as important is making sure that you ask as many questions as possible. Continental and international football federations possess unique knowledge and experience when it comes to organising tournaments such as these. So you need to take on board as much information from them as possible, so that you can make practical use of it further down the line and organise the best tournament in history." Representatives from the Russia 2018 LOC have already had the opportunity to study the staging of EURO 2012 as part of the "Observer" programme, which ran in parallel to the tournament in Poland and Ukraine. Along with representatives of the Host Cities for Russia 2018, the LOC's experts visited Kharkiv to study how the city's airport functioned during peak hours, and also travelled to other EURO 2012 host cities to learn from the experiences of local organisers. FIFA