2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship

2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship
2021-es U21-es labdarúgó-Európa-bajnokság; (in Hungarian); Evropsko prvenstvo v nogometu do 21 let 2021; (in Slovene)
Tournament details
Host countries	Hungary; Slovenia
Dates	24–31 March 2021 (group stage); 31 May – 6 June 2021 (knockout stage)
Teams	16 (from 1 confederation)
Venue(s)	8 (in 8 host cities)

The 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (also known as UEFA Under-21 Euro 2021) will be the 23rd edition of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship (26th edition if the Under-23 era is also included), the biennial international youth football championship organised by UEFA for the men's under-21 national teams of Europe. Initially, 12 teams were to play in the tournament, however on 6 February 2019, UEFA's Executive Committee increased this number to 16.[1] Only players born on or after 1 January 1998 are eligible to participate.[2]

The tournament will be co-hosted by Hungary and Slovenia. It was originally scheduled to take place from 9 to 26 June 2021.[3] However, the tournament was rescheduled following the postponement of UEFA Euro 2020 to June/July 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[4] The new dates were to be decided initially on 27 May 2020,[5] but then postponed to 17 June 2020,[6] where the UEFA Executive Committee meeting discussed the calendar and format of the tournament.[7] On 17 June 2020, UEFA announced the tournament would be played in two stages; the group stage, which would take place from 24 to 31 March 2021, and the knockout stage, which would take place from 31 May to 6 June 2021.[8][9][10]

Spain are the defending champions.

Host selection

The following associations indicated their interests to bid for the tournament:

Hungary / Slovenia (joint bid)[11][12]

Hungary and Slovenia were appointed as co-hosts at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Dublin, Republic of Ireland on 3 December 2018.[3][13]

Qualification

All 55 UEFA nations entered the competition, and, unlike the last year competition, with the co-hosts Hungary and Slovenia qualifying automatically, the other 53 teams will compete in the qualifying competition to determine the remaining 14 spots in the final tournament. The draw for the qualifying group stage was held on 11 December 2018.[14] The qualifying group stage will take place from March 2019 to October 2020, while the play-offs will take place in November 2020.[2] The qualifying competition would originally consist of two rounds:[2]

Qualifying group stage: The 53 teams are drawn into nine groups: eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. Each group is played in home-and-away round-robin format. The nine group winners and the best runners-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) qualify directly for the final tournament, while the remaining eight runners-up advance to the play-offs.
Play-offs: The eight teams are drawn into four ties to play home-and-away two-legged matches to determine the last four qualified teams.

However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe which caused the postponement of matches in the qualifying group stage, UEFA announced on 17 June 2020 that the play-offs would be cancelled. Instead, the nine group winners and the five best runners-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) qualify for the final tournament.[8][9][10]

Qualified teams

The following teams qualified for the final tournament.

Note: All appearance statistics include only U-21 era (since 1978).

Team	Method of qualification	Date of qualification	Appearance	Last appearance	Previous best performance
Hungary	Co-hosts	3 December 2018	5th	1996 (quarter-finals)	Semi-finals (1986)
Slovenia	Co-hosts	3 December 2018	1st	—	Debut
Russia	Group 5 winners	13 October 2020	4th (7th incl. Soviet Union)	2013 (group stage)	Champions (1980, 1990)
Switzerland	Group 2 runners-up^{[^]}	13 October 2020	4th	2011 (runners-up)	Runners-up (2011)
Netherlands	Group 7 winners	13 October 2020	9th	2013 (semi-finals)	Champions (2006, 2007)
Denmark	Group 8 winners	13 October 2020	9th	2019 (group stage)	Semi-finals (1992, 2015)
Spain	Group 6 winners	13 October 2020	15th	2019 (champions)	Champions (1986, 1998, 2011, 2013, 2019)
England	Group 3 winners	13 October 2020	16th	2019 (group stage)	Champions (1982, 1984)
France	Group 2 winners	12 November 2020	10th	2019 (semi-finals)	Champions (1988)
Italy	Group 1 winners	15 November 2020	21st	2019 (group stage)	Champions (1992, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2004)
Portugal	Group 7 runners-up^{[^]}	15 November 2020	9th	2017 (group stage)	Runners-up (1994, 2015)
Czech Republic	Group 4 winners	17 November 2020	8th (14th incl. Czechoslovakia)	2017 (group stage)	Champions (2002)
Germany	Group 9 winners	17 November 2020	13th	2019 (runners-up)	Champions (2009, 2017)
Croatia	Group 4 runners-up^{[^]}	17 November 2020	4th	2019 (group stage)	Group stage (2000, 2004, 2019)
Romania	Group 8 runners-up^{[^]}	17 November 2020	3rd	2019 (semi-finals)	Semi-finals (2019)
Iceland	Group 1 runners-up^{[^]}	24 November 2020	2nd	2011 (group stage)	Group stage (2011)

Notes

^
The best five runners-up among all nine groups qualified for the final tournament.

Final draw

The final draw was held on 10 December 2020, 15:00 CET, at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.[15] The 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four teams. The teams will be seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying stage, calculated based on the following:[2]

2017 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition (20%)
2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition (40%)
2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying competition (group stage only) (40%)

The 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four teams. The teams will be seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying group stage. Each group will contain one team from each of the four seeding pots. The hosts Hungary and Slovenia will be assigned to position A1 and B1 respectively in the draw, while the other 14 teams will be drawn to the other available positions in their group.[16]

Pot 1
Team	Coeff[16]
Spain	40,620
Germany	38,490
France	37,147
England	36,846

Pot 2
Team	Coeff[16]
Italy	36,361
Denmark	36,088
Portugal	35,863
Netherlands	32,686

Pot 3
Team	Coeff[16]
Romania	32,198
Croatia	31,902
Czech Republic	29,648
Russia	29,162

Pot 4
Team	Coeff[16]
Switzerland	28,059
Iceland	26,071
Slovenia (position B1)	25,851
Hungary (position A1)	21,318

Venues

The following are the venues where the competition will be played:[17]

Hungary[18]
Székesfehérvár	Szombathely	Budapest	Győr
MOL Aréna Sóstó (Aréna Sóstó)[17]	Haladás Sportkomplexum (Haladás Stadion)[17]	Bozsik Aréna	Ménfői úti Stadion (Gyirmóti Stadion)[17]
Capacity: 14,000[17]	Capacity: 8,900[17]	Capacity: 8,468[17]	Capacity: 4,335[17]

Székesfehérvár Budapest Szombathely Győr Locations of stadiums in Hungary		Ljubljana Celje Maribor Koper Locations of stadiums in Slovenia
Slovenia[19][20]
Ljubljana	Celje	Maribor	Koper
Stadion Stožice	Stadion Z'dežele (Stadion Celje)[17]	Ljudski vrt (Stadion Ljudski vrt)[17]	Stadion Bonifika
Capacity: 16,100[17]	Capacity: 13,600[17]	Capacity: 12,435[17]	Capacity: 4,010[17]

The provisional schedule was announced on 6 November 2019, with the above eight venues hosting matches.[21] Originally Hungary (Groups A and C) and Slovenia (Groups B and D) would both host two groups, two quarter-finals and one semi-final each, while the final would be played in Hungary at the MOL Aréna Sóstó, Székesfehérvár.

Squads

Each national team have to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom must be goalkeepers. If a player is injured or ill severely enough to prevent his participation in the tournament before his team's first match, he can be replaced by another player.[2]

Group stage

The group winners and runners-up advance to the quarter-finals.

Tiebreakers

In the group stage, teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Articles 18.01 and 18.02):[2]

Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams have the same number of points, and they met in the last round of the group and are tied after applying all criteria above (not used if more than two teams have the same number of points, or if their rankings are not relevant for qualification for the next stage);
Disciplinary points (red card = 3 points, yellow card = 1 point, expulsion for two yellow cards in one match = 3 points);
UEFA coefficient ranking for the final draw.

All times are local, CET (UTC+1) for matches between 24 and 27 March 2021, CEST (UTC+2) for matches between 28 and 31 March 2021.

Group A

Pos	Team	Qualification
1	Hungary (H)	Knockout stage
2	Germany	Knockout stage
3	Romania
4	Netherlands

First match(es) will be played on 24 March 2021. Source: UEFA
Rules for classification: Tiebreakers
(H) Host.

24 March 2021