UEFA President Michel unveiled his home country France as hosts of Euro 2016 today. I know what you’re thinking. “Fix!”, right? But probably not. UEFA is not a dictatorship, and France was elected as Euro 2016 host after a series of ballots by UEFA committee members.

The other two bidding nations were Italy and Turkey. Italy was knocked out after the first round of voting, and France defeated Turkey by just one vote in the runoff.

“I want first to thank our friends from Italy and Turkey; I feel for them and the feelings of frustration and sadness after months of work and I wish Italian and Turkish football good luck,” said French Football Federation (FFF) president Jean-Pierre Escalettes.

“For us it is a moment of intense emotions, given that in 2016 we will welcome European football to France. We will fulfil our promises and we thank our friends on the Executive Committee at UEFA. They have put their trust in us and that’s what counts for us. This is a beautiful day for us.”

The arrival dates of all 32 31 teams not named South Africa for the World Cup have begun to leak into the South African press, which is odd as they were supposed to be announced, but perhaps the leakage before the announcement is for very good reason: The first team arrives tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow – the 26th of May.

It’s near impossible to believe the tournament could be creeping so close, but the Soccerroos have booked the OR Tambo International Airport for their arrival on Wednesday evening, becoming to first team to land in South Africa after that short hop from Australia.

The remaining arrival dates after the jump.

There’s little interesting about the actual arrival dates short of Spain, who will be showing up fashionably late, after the opening ceremonies. And if memory serves, they showed up fashionably late to Euro 2008 as well.

We’ve been focusing a lot on the teams and players of World Cup 2010. So now it’s time to take a look at the World Cup 2010 stadiums (or stadia, if you prefer). A total of 10 different stadiums will be used for World Cup 2010, spread across nine different cities (Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, gets two) and we’ve got an image and a bit of info about each one for you below.

This isn’t really a guide to the World Cup stadiums. More of an overview. But it’s definitely worth reading, if only to learn who built Royal Bafokeng Stadium and where they got the money from.

UEFA president Michel Platini has said Germany or Hungary could be asked to provide venues for the Euro 2012 football championships if Ukraine fails to show progress on its preparations for the event by the end of this month.

Platini says he still believes Ukraine “will complete all the necessary work on time”.

But in an interview published on the German football federation website, he outlined an option which would see six venues in Poland - up from the four currently being provided by the country - and two each from Hungary and Germany.

Ukraine was given a deadline of the end of June by Platini last month to show it can step up preparations in its four venues.

Czech Republic and Slovakia are in talks about creating a joint football league for the first time since the country was partitioned in 1993.

USA Today reports that the Slovak federation proposed the common league, with 12 Czech and six Slovak clubs, earlier this year. The Czech federation has now begun discussing it with their Slovak counterparts after Uefa said it would not rule out approving the project.

The federations hope the league could attract bigger attendances and greater interest from sponsors that the individual leagues currently do.

"Should things go our way, the Czech-Slovak soccer league could be launched as of the 2012-13 season," said Karol Belaník, chairman of the Slovak Union of Soccer Clubs, as reported by The Prague Post.