The European Championship Finals got under way at the weekend amid contrasting fortunes and forecasts for the dual host nations.
Poland has used the tournament to justify a massive programme of infrastructural investment.  It has upgraded eight international airports and finally completed motorway links between each of its major cities.
Many of the original contracts were awarded to the lowest bidder in a public procurement contest but fierce competition saw prices driven very low and few of the original contractors were able to complete the work, leading to replacements having to be brought in.
The total infrastructural investment amounts to a little more than €20 billion but with only a small proportion of this going on stadia and the bulk on projects that will be of long term genuine benefit, Poland is likely to emerge well from the competition.
The Ukraine is in a different position.  Many foreign leaders are boycotting events in the country over political and human rights concerns and a reputation tarnished in that way can take a generation to recover.
Total public spending on the event has soared from an original estimate of €800 million to ten times that and an indication of where the overruns have gone can be gained from the more than 100 criminal case currently being pursued into alleged corruption around the awarding of Euro 2012 construction projects.