Flâneur: 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship

2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship
Campionato europeo di calcio Under-21 2019

Tournament details
Host countries	Italy San Marino
Dates	16–30 June 2019^[1]
Teams	12 (from 1 confederation)
Venue(s)	6 (in 6 host cities)
Final positions
Champions	Spain (5th title)
Runners-up	Germany
Tournament statistics
Matches played	21
Goals scored	78 (3.71 per match)
Attendance	214,637 (10,221 per match)
Top scorer(s)	Luca Waldschmidt(7 goals)
Best player(s)	Fabián Ruiz

The 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (also known as UEFA Under-21 Euro 2019) was the 22nd edition of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship (25th edition if the Under-23 era is also included), the biennial international youth footballchampionship organised by UEFA for the men's under-21 national teams of Europe. The final tournament was hosted by Italy (and some matches by San Marino) in mid-2019, after their bid was selected by the UEFA Executive Committee on 9 December 2016 in Nyon, Switzerland.

A total of 12 teams played in the tournament, with players born on or after 1 January 1996 eligible to participate.

Same as previous Under-21 Championships that were held one year prior to the Olympics, this tournament served as European qualifying for the Olympic football tournament, with the top four teams of the tournament qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympic men's football tournament in Japan, where they will be represented by their under-23 national teams with maximum of three overage players allowed. The four teams that qualified for the Olympic Games were the ones that qualified for the knockout stages of this championship. For the first time, the video assistant referee (VAR) system was used at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship.

Germany were the defending champions.

Hosts

The Italian Football Federation confirmed that Italy would bid to host the tournament in 2019, which also involved the San Marino Football Federation. Italy and San Marino were appointed as hosts at a meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee in Nyon on 9 December 2016.

Qualification

All 55 UEFA nations entered the competition, and with the hosts Italy qualifying automatically (the other co-hosts San Marino would not qualify automatically), the other 54 teams competed in the qualifying competition to determine the remaining 11 spots in the final tournament. The qualifying competition, which took place from March 2017 to November 2018, consisted of two rounds:

Qualifying group stage: The 54 teams were drawn into nine groups of six teams. Each group was played in home-and-away round-robin format. The nine group winners qualified directly for the final tournament, while the four best runners-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) advanced to the play-offs.
Play-offs: The four teams were drawn into two ties to play home-and-away two-legged matches to determine the last two qualified teams.

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
Italy	Hosts	9 December 2016	20th	2017 (semi-finals)	Champions (1992, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2004)
Spain	Group 2 winners	6 September 2018	14th	2017 (runners-up)	Champions (1986, 1998, 2011, 2013)
France	Group 9 winners	7 September 2018	9th	2006 (semi-finals)	Champions (1988)
England	Group 4 winners	11 October 2018	15th	2017 (semi-finals)	Champions (1982, 1984)
Serbia	Group 7 winners	12 October 2018	11th^[SRB]	2017 (group stage)	Champions (1978) (as Yugoslavia)^[SRB]
Germany	Group 5 winners	12 October 2018	12th	2017 (champions)	Champions (2009, 2017)
Croatia	Group 1 winners	15 October 2018	3rd	2004 (group stage)	Group stage (2000, 2004)
Denmark	Group 3 winners	16 October 2018	8th	2017 (group stage)	Semi-finals (1992, 2015)
Belgium	Group 6 winners	16 October 2018	3rd	2007 (semi-finals)	Semi-finals (2007)
Romania	Group 8 winners	16 October 2018	2nd	1998 (quarter-finals)	Quarter-finals (1998)
Poland	Play-off winners	20 November 2018	7th	2017 (group stage)	Quarter-finals (1982, 1984, 1986, 1992, 1994)
Austria	Play-off winners	20 November 2018	1st	—	Debut

Notes

^ ^{Jump up to:a b} Appearances include 4 as Yugoslavia and 2 as Serbia and Montenegro. Their previous best performance as Serbia was runners-up (2007).

Final draw

The final draw was held on 23 November 2018, 18:00 CET (UTC+1), at the Lamborghini headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, and was conducted by tournament ambassador Andrea Pirlo, who won the tournament in 2000.

The 12 teams were drawn into three groups of four teams. Italy, the host country, was assigned to position A1 in the draw, while the other teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying stage, calculated based on the following:

2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition (20%)
2017 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition (40%)
2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying competition (group stage only) (40%)

Each group contained either the hosts or one team from Pot 1 (which were drawn to position B1 or C1), and one team from Pot 2 and two teams from Pot 3 (which were drawn to any of the positions 2–4 in the groups). The draw pots were as follows:

Hosts
Team
Italy

Pot 1
Team	Coeff
Germany	39,913
England	37,946

Pot 2
Team	Coeff
Spain	37,774
Denmark	35,533
France	35,182

Pot 3
Team	Coeff
Serbia	33,083
Croatia	32,952
Belgium	32,122
Austria	31,767
Poland	30,946
Romania	29,259

Venues

On 9 December 2016, Italian Football Federation pre-selected venues (including one inside San Marino territory):

Stadio Renato Dall'Ara in Bologna, Italy
Mapei Stadium – Città del Tricolore in Reggio Emilia, Italy
Stadio Dino Manuzzi in Cesena, Italy
Stadio Nereo Rocco in Trieste, Italy
Dacia Arena in Udine, Italy
San Marino Stadium in Serravalle, San Marino

Bologna	Reggio nell'Emilia	Cesena
Stadio Renato Dall'Ara	Mapei Stadium – Città del Tricolore	Stadio Dino Manuzzi
Capacity: 31,000	Capacity: 21,500	Capacity: 20,194

Trieste	Udine	Serravalle (San Marino)
Stadio Nereo Rocco	Dacia Arena	San Marino Stadium
Capacity: 20,500	Capacity: 25,151	Capacity: 4,778

Bologna Reggio nell'Emilia Cesena Trieste Udine San Marino

Match officials

Country	Referee	1st assistant referee	2nd assistant referee
Belarus	Aleksei Kulbakov	Dzmitry Zhuk	Aleh Maslianka
Bulgaria	Georgi Kabakov	Martin Margaritov	Diyan Valkov
Israel	Orel Grinfeld	Roy Hassan	Idan Yarkoni
Latvia	Andris Treimanis	Haralds Gudermanis	Aleksejs Spasjonņikovs
Netherlands	Serdar Gözübüyük	Charles Schaap	Jan de Vries
Romania	István Kovács	Mihai Ovidiu Artene	Vasile Florin Marinescu
Scotland	Bobby Madden	Francis Connor	David Roome
Serbia	Srđan Jovanović	Uroš Stojković	Milan Mihajlović
Sweden	Andreas Ekberg	Mehmet Culum	Stefan Hallberg

Video Assistant Referees (VAR)

Stuart Attwell & Paul Tierney (England)
Ricardo de Burgos & Xavier Estrada Fernández (Spain)
Ruddy Buquet & François Letexier (France)
Christian Dingert & Tobias Stieler (Germany)
Michael Fabbri & Marco Guida (Italy)
Jochem Kamphuis & Bas Nijhuis (Netherlands)
Luís Godinho & João Pinheiro (Portugal)

Squads

Each national team had to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom had to be goalkeepers, at least 10 full days before the opening match. If a player was injured or ill severely enough to prevent his participation in the tournament before his team's first match, he could be replaced by another player.

Group stage

The group winners and the best runners-up advanced to the semi-finals and qualified for the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Tiebreakers

In the group stage, teams were 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 would be applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Articles 18.01 and 18.02):

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 would be 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);
Position in the UEFA under-21 national team coefficient ranking for the final draw.

All times are local, CEST (UTC+2).

Group A[edit]

Pos	Team	Pld	W	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Spain	3	2	1	8	4	+4	6^[a]	Knockout stage and 2020 Summer Olympics
2	Italy (H)	3	2	1	6	3	+3	6^[a]
3	Poland	3	2	1	4	7	−3	6^[a]
4	Belgium	3	0	3	4	8	−4	0

Source: UEFA
Rules for classification: Group stage tiebreakers
(H) Host.
Notes:

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Head-to-head goal difference: Spain +3, Italy +1, Poland –4.

16 June 2019

18:30

Poland	3–2	Belgium
Żurkowski 26' Bielik 52' Szymański 79'	Report	Leya Iseka 16' Cools 84'

Mapei Stadium – Città del Tricolore, Reggio Emilia

Attendance: 2,534^[17]

Referee: István Kovács (Romania)

16 June 2019