UEFA Euro 2012 two consecutive European Championships, and also three straight major tournaments (Euro 2008, 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012). Spain had already gained entry to the 2013 Confederations Cup by winning the 2010 World Cup, so runners-up Italy qualified instead. As at Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland, both 2012 host nations were eliminated in the group stage. The hosting of the event was initially contested by five bids representing seven countries: Croatia–Hungary, Greece, Italy, Poland–Ukraine, and Turkey. In November 2005, after an initial consideration of the bid data by UEFA, both the Greek and Turkish bids were eliminated from the
UEFA Euro 2012 former players who had each been part of European Championship winning teams: Horst Hrubesch, Marco van Basten, Peter Schmeichel and Zinedine Zidane. Teams were drawn consecutively into Group A to D. First, the Pot 1 teams were assigned to the first positions of their groups, while next the positions of all other teams were drawn separately from Pot 4 to 2 (for the purposes of determining the match schedules in each group). The draw resulted in the following groups: Eight cities were selected by UEFA as host venues. In a return to the format used at Euro 1992, Euro 1996