The 2023 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (also known as UEFA Under-21 Euro 2023) was the 24th edition of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship (27th 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. A total of 16 teams played in the final tournament, and only players born on or after 1 January 2000 were eligible to participate.[2]
As with previous Under-21 Championships held one year prior to the Olympic Games, this tournament served as European qualifying for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Besides France, which qualified automatically as Olympic hosts, eligible teams competed for qualifying (3 berths) for the men's football tournament of the 2024 Summer Olympics, where they will be represented by their under-23 national teams with a maximum of three overage players allowed.
Germany were the defending champion, but they were not able to defend their title after being eliminated in the group stage.
England won their third title by defeating Spain 1–0 in the final. They became the first team to win the UEFA European Under-21 Championship without conceding a single goal in the entire tournament.[4]
Both Romania and Georgia bid for the tournament separately.[9] The two countries were appointed as co-hosts at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting on 3 December 2020.[3][10][11]
On 2 May 2022, UEFA announced that Russia were removed from European Under-21 Championship qualification due to their country's invasion of Ukraine, with all their earlier results considered null and void.[12] Spain therefore qualified for the European Under-21 Championship, as no other teams could surpass them.
The best runner-up among all nine groups qualified for the final tournament.
Final draw
The final draw was held on 18 October 2022, 18:00 CET in Bucharest.[13] The sixteen teams were drawn into four groups of four teams. The teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying stage, calculated based on the following:[2]
The hosts Romania and Georgia were assigned to positions A1 and B1, respectively, while the remaining fourteen teams were drawn to the other available positions in their group.[14]
Each national team had to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom had to be goalkeepers. 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.[2]
Group stage
The group winners and runners-up advanced to the quarter-finals.
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 were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Articles 18.01 and 18.02):[2]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams were tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams were still tied, all head-to-head criteria above were 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 had 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 had the same number of points, or if their rankings were 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, EEST (UTC+3) in Romania and GET (UTC+4) in Georgia.
In the knockout stage, extra time and a penalty shoot-out were used to decide the winners if necessary. As France qualified as hosts and England were ineligible for the 2024 Summer Olympics, their results were used to determine whether an Olympic play-off match would be required and who would participate.[2]
As England is not an IOC member and France did not reach the semi-finals, all other semi-finalists qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics regardless of results.
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