UEFA chiefs spoke out against hacker attacks made on eastern European teams at Euro 2012 as in a series of concerted assaults unidentified hackers stole vowels from players' names in an attempt to sabotage TV commentaries.
A spokesman angrily stated "the perpetrators are nothing more than vandals who have ruined this tournament for some young men who may never again have an opportunity to appear before a worldwide audience. It is difficult enough for commentators to cope with "Sokratis Papastathopoulos" and other Greek players but when a whole series of vowels is stolen from a team then the commentary becomes impossible. The police have been informed and these hackers will be hunted down."
The Czech team escaped lightly from the attacks with only a few players being affected including Milan Petrzela and Chelsea's Petr Cech. Croatia too only suffered a few casualties, among them Sime Vrsaljko and Ognjen Vukojevic.
Hardest hit was the Polish team with the Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny, Przemyslaw Tyton, Grzegorz Wojtkowiak, Jakub Wawrzyniak, Lukasz Piszczek and Adam Matuszczyk. The Polish FA is very concerned that Jakub Blaszczykowski was particularly distraught and may be considering retirement from international football.
