Four of the most celebrated footballers to come out of Poland and Ukraine have agreed to represent their countries as tournament ambassadors for UEFA EURO 2012™.

Ambassadors
Former Polish internationals Zbigniew Boniek and Andrzej Szarmach have gladly accepted invitations to act as ambassadors for the UEFA European Championship final round in three summers' time, with FC Dynamo Kyiv greats Oleh Blokhin and Andriy Shevchenko being equally delighted to play the same role for Ukraine.

World Cup star
Zbigniew Boniek, 53, has already flown the flag for Poland as player and coach, most notably when the national team finished third at the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain. An exciting attacker, he left Widzew Łódź for Juventus directly after that tournament and proceeded to win the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Super Cup in 1984, followed by the European Champion Clubs' Cup and European/South American Cup the next year. Boniek hung up his boots at AS Roma in 1988, having scored 50 goals in 172 games in Poland, 30 in 158 in Italy, and 24 in 80 appearances for his country.

Olympic silver medallist
Boniek, who also coached Poland in 2002, will be joined on the UEFA EURO 2012 promotion trail by Andrzej Szarmach, another veteran of Polish World Cup campaigns. Szarmach spearheaded the Poland side that took third place at the 1974 finals, hitting five goals, before making a similar impact at the 1976 Montreal Olympics where his team were silver medallists. In total, the forward, who was born in 1950, registered 32 times in 61 outings for the full national side. Szarmach's goalscoring legacy at club level was no less impressive. He maintained his strike rate in France with 147 in 244 matches, including 94 in 148 games for AJ Auxerre.

European footballer of the year
Poland's UEFA EURO 2012 co-hosts Ukraine will also be represented by goalscorers supreme ahead of, and during, the tournament in Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk, Warsaw (Poland), Lviv, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv (Ukraine). Oleh Blokhin was the outstanding Dynamo Kyiv No11 elected European footballer of the year in 1975 after helping Dynamo land the UEFA Super Cup and the first of two UEFA Cup Winners' Cups. In 18 years with Dynamo, he also lifted seven Soviet Supreme League titles and netted more than 200 league goals. A veteran of the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, he was capped 112 times by the USSR, scoring 42 goals. Blokhin, now 57, has also coached Ukraine's national team after spells playing and coaching in Austria, Cyprus and Greece.

UEFA Champions League winner
Andriy Shevchenko is the final name on the A list of ambassadors and needs no introduction. The 33-year-old is back in Kyiv with Dynamo, where he originally claimed five Ukrainian titles and three cups, as well as reaching a UEFA Champions League semi-final. Shevchenko joined AC Milan in 1999 where his prolific exploits earned him the European footballer of the year prize in 2004. When he left Italy for Chelsea FC in 2006, his haul of 173 goals had made him Milan's second-highest marksman; he had also converted the winning penalty in the 2003 UEFA Champions League final. Shevchenko recently returned to Dynamo and is fast approaching 100 caps for the national side.