Concerns about Ukraine's suitability as a Euro 2012 host nation will finally be put to the test as two venues with question marks over them host eagerly anticipated matches in Group B.

Travel experts who visited Poland and Ukraine in the lead-up to the tournament reported that, while the former appeared geared up and ready, the latter appeared anything but.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the venues of Kharkiv and Lviv that host matches between Holland and Denmark and Germany and Portugal.

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The signs were not good yesterday as flights from Kiev to Lviv were delayed by six hours before being cancelled.

In Kharkiv, meanwhile, hotel accommodation is so thin on the ground and so expensive that most supporters will fly in from their home countries on the day of their games and straight out again in the early hours.

None of this is conducive to the carnival atmosphere that is supposed to surround these tournaments and it will be up to the four venue cities - Kiev and Donetsk being the other two - to prove that the Ukrainians have the appetite and the wherewithal to make the tournament work.

Certainly Grigoriy Surkis, president of the Ukrainian football federation, remains convinced his country can deliver a spectacle to rival that of its western neighbour.

Surkis said: 'This tournament has caught the imagination in Ukraine, with the period of preparation being called the "five-year renaissance" here.

'The championship will last less than a month but our young state's rejuvenation will benefit many generations of Ukrainians.

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