Latest updates

Check the Important info page for latest updates! (15 February 2024)

Friday, September 21, 2012

2016 UEFA European Under-21 Championship - possible format

Yes, 2016, not 2015. The 2015 edition will be hosted by the Czech Republic (more on this in my next post).

The 2015 edition will be the last U21 tournament before the competition reverts to even numbered years the following summer.

UEFA moved the tournament to odd years starting from 2007 "to allow it to step out of the shadow of the UEFA European Football Championship and the FIFA World Cup.". It seems being in the shadow is just fine :)

UEFA might use the same system used for the 2007 Under-21 qualification.

A preliminary round to trim the field to 42 teams, followed by 14 three-team groups, with the winners playing-off for the seven spots.

The bottom 20 teams would be involved in the preliminary (assuming none of them are chosen as hosts).

The group stage draw will have one pot with the top 14 teams, one pot with the next 14 and one last pot with 4 teams and the 10 winners of the preliminary round.

The 2016 hosts were not chosen yet. I think the bidding hasn't even started, that's why I've listed all UEFA members in the table below and that's why the third pot has 5 teams, not 4.

Rank - Team - Coefficient
 1 Spain               37336
 2 Czech Republic      34824
 3 Netherlands         32702
 4 England             32502
 5 Germany             32392
 6 Switzerland         31766
 7 France              31743
 8 Italy               30936
 9 Israel              30627
10 Sweden              30296
11 Russia              30135
12 Romania             29654
13 Serbia              28693
14 Denmark             28547
----------------------------
15 Portugal            28377
16 Turkey              28118
17 Ukraine             27881
18 Scotland            27310
19 Armenia             27068
20 Bosnia-Herzegovina  27019
21 Slovakia            26968
22 Slovenia            26818
23 Belgium             25564
24 Belarus             25563
25 Hungary             25501
26 Greece              25385
27 Austria             25169
28 Wales               25064
----------------------------
29 Montenegro          24793
30 Norway              24501
31 Republic of Ireland 23310
32 Georgia             22968
33 Poland              22877
----------------------------
34 Finland             22185
35 Croatia             21576
36 Bulgaria            21460
37 FYR Macedonia       20585
38 Cyprus              20264
39 Moldova             19851
40 Iceland             19434
41 Lithuania           17617
42 Azerbaijan          16772
43 Northern Ireland    15834
44 Faroe Islands       15409
45 Albania             15356
46 Latvia              15184
47 Kazakhstan          14709
48 Estonia             14009
49 Malta               12563
50 Luxembourg          10334
51 Andorra              8717
52 San Marino           8538
53 Liechtenstein        8167

About me:

Christian, husband, father x 3, programmer, Romanian. Started the blog in March 2007. Quit in April 2018. You can find me on LinkedIn.

3 comments:

  1. Urgh, what's the point, it will just oversaturate the summer now. Before we got a tournament every year. The quality of the tournament will also be diluted as the best talent at U21 level will be with the senior teams. This will be especially bad in Euro years with 24 teams, the entire field will probably be stripped in this way.

    Stupid, stupid move. They should also expand the tournament to 16 teams, 8 is too harsh, especially with the qualifying format.

    Does anyone know why these idiots have done this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In order "to align the qualifying phase of the competition with that of the national A teams".

      See UEFA.com.

      Delete
  2. I believe this has to do with the Olympic tournament. The UEFA under-21 championship is used to select the four European teams representing UEFA at the Olympics (an under-23 tournament). With the old system the teams were known more than a year in advance and the four qualified federations had to juggle two teams: the one going to the Olympics and the one participating in the next under-21 championship.

    ReplyDelete