The 2022 UEFA Futsal Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Futsal Euro 2022, was the 12th edition of the UEFA Futsal Championship, the international futsal championship organised by UEFA for the men's national teams of Europe. It was hosted for the first time in the Netherlands.
This is the first tournament to be held on a four-year basis and featuring 16 teams, as the competition was previously played every two years and included 12 teams since 2010. It took place between 19 January and 6 February 2022, in the cities of Amsterdam and Groningen. The teams practiced for the competition in Wildervank and Rotterdam.[1]
Portugal won their second title in a row after defeating Russia in the final 4–2, thus becoming the second national team, after Spain, to successfully defend the title.
Host selection
The bidding procedure for hosting was launched on 12 October 2018, with a deadline of 21 January 2019 to express their interest in hosting. Seven associations expressed an interest in hosting:[2]
The 15 teams which joined automatically qualified hosts Netherlands in the finals were decided by qualifying running from 29 January 2020 to November 2021.[6][7]
Qualified teams
The following 16 teams qualify for the final tournament.
1Bold indicates champions for that year. Italic indicates hosts for that year.
Final draw
The final draw was held in Zeist on 18 October 2021.[8] The teams were seeded according to the UEFA senior men's futsal national team coefficient rankings, with the winner of the play-off taking the ranking of the contender with the higher coefficient, Serbia.[9] For political reasons, Russia and Ukraine could not be drawn in the same group or in groups scheduled to be played on the same day (due to a potential clash of teams and clash of fans).
Due to COVID-19 restrictions in the Netherlands, initial games of the tournament were held behind closed doors. In the evening of 25 January, the Dutch government allowed a limited number of spectators to attend matches. On 26 January only fans who purchased tickets before the spectator ban could attend, and from 27 January ticket sales were open to the general public.[11] The capacity limits for the rest of the tournament were 1,250 at Ziggo Dome and 650 at MartiniPlaza.[12]
Each national team have to submit a squad of 14 players, two of whom must be goalkeepers. During the final tournament, each team is allowed to replace a maximum of one outfield player if he is injured or ill severely enough to prevent his participation in the tournament. Each team is also allowed to temporarily replace a goalkeeper if there are fewer than two healthy goalkeepers.[7]
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 20.01 and 20.02):[7]
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);
In the knockout stage, extra time and penalty shoot-out are used to decide the winner if necessary, except for the third place match where extra time is not played but a direct penalty shoot-out is used, instead.[7]
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