Platini plays host to dignitaries for final
Football's two most powerful men, Uefa president Michel Platini and his Fifa counterpart Sepp Blatter, will be among heads of state, royalty and sports stars to watch Sunday's Uefa Euro 2012™ final between Spain and Italy.
Platini will be flanked by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Spain's Prince Felipe in the presidential box at the Olympic Stadium in Kiev, where Spain are hoping to become the first team to win the championships back-to-back.
Blatter will be sitting alongside Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and the head of the Ukrainian football federation, Grigoriy Surkis, according to an official guest list supplied by Uefa.
International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge will have Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski for company.
Among the other VIP guests are Polish football federation chief Grzegorz Lato and Poland legend Andrzej Szarmach, as well as Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin, the country's star striker Andrei Shevchenko and the former pole vaulter Sergei Bubka.
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is scheduled to attend with Rinat Akhmetov, the billionaire businessman and owner of Shakhtar Donetsk, and Alexander Yaroslavsky, the wealthy chairman of Metallist Kharkiv.
Issa Hayatou, the president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb and Fifa vice-president Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein will also watch the game.
Uefa's official guest list for the presidential box did not include Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who is subject to a European Union travel ban for human rights abuses in his country.
The reported attendance of the Belarus strongman, dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by the United States, prompted a militant feminist group to protest in Kiev earlier Sunday.
Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili had also reportedly been invited but his name was also not on the list supplied to media.
