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)
Final positions
Champions	Germany (3rd title)
Runners-up	Portugal
Tournament statistics
Matches played	31
Goals scored	83 (2.68 per match)
Attendance	13,413 (433 per match)
Top scorer(s)	Lukas Nmecha; (4 goals)
Best player(s)	Fábio Vieira
	← 2019 2023 →

The 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship (also known as UEFA Under-21 Euro 2021) was 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.^[2] Only players born on or after 1 January 1998 were eligible to participate.^[3]

The tournament was co-hosted by Hungary and Slovenia. It was originally scheduled to take place from 9 to 26 June 2021.^[4] However, the tournament was rescheduled following the postponement of UEFA Euro 2020 to June/July 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[5] The new dates were to be decided initially on 27 May 2020,^[6] but then postponed to 17 June 2020,^[7] where the UEFA Executive Committee meeting discussed the calendar and format of the tournament.^[8] On 17 June 2020, UEFA announced the tournament would be played in two stages; the group stage, which took place from 24 to 31 March 2021, and the knockout stage, which took place from 31 May to 6 June 2021.^[9]^[10]^[11] Due to COVID-19 Pandemic the VAR system wasn't used.

Spain were the defending champions, but were eliminated in the knockout phase by Portugal.

Host selection

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

Hungary / Slovenia (joint bid)^[12]^[13]

Hungary and Slovenia were appointed as co-hosts at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Dublin, Republic of Ireland on 3 December 2018.^[4]^[14]

Qualification

All 55 UEFA nations entered the competition, and, unlike the last competition, co-hosts Hungary and Slovenia qualified automatically, and the other 53 teams competed 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.^[15] The qualifying group stage took place from March 2019 to October 2020, while the play-offs were set to take place in November 2020.^[3] The qualifying competition would originally consist of two rounds:^[3]

Qualifying group stage: The 53 teams were drawn into nine groups: eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. Each group was played in home-and-away round-robin format. The nine group winners and the best runner-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) qualified directly for the final tournament, while the remaining eight runners-up advance to the play-offs.
Play-offs: The eight teams were 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) qualified for the final tournament.^[9]^[10]^[11]

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	8th	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.^[16] 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:^[3]

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 hosts Hungary and Slovenia were assigned to position A1 and B1 respectively in the draw, while the other fourteen teams were drawn to the other available positions in their group.^[17]

Pot 1
Team	Coeff^[17]
Spain	40,620
Germany	38,490
France	37,147
England	36,846

Pot 2
Team	Coeff^[17]
Italy	36,361
Denmark	36,088
Portugal	35,863
Netherlands	32,686

Pot 3
Team	Coeff^[17]
Romania	32,198
Croatia	31,902
Czech Republic	29,648
Russia	29,162

Pot 4
Team	Coeff^[17]
Switzerland	28,059
Iceland	26,071
Slovenia (position B1)	25,851
Hungary (position A1)	21,318

Venues

The following were the venues where the competition was played:^[18]

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

Székesfehérvár Budapest Szombathely Győr Locations of stadiums in Hungary		Ljubljana Celje Maribor Koper Locations of stadiums in Slovenia
Slovenia
Ljubljana	Celje	Maribor	Koper
Stožice Stadium	Stadion Z'dežele (Stadion Celje)^[18]	Ljudski vrt	Bonifika Stadium
Capacity: 16,100^[19]	Capacity: 13,600^[20]	Capacity: 12,702^[21]	Capacity: 4,010^[22]

The provisional schedule was announced in November 2019, with the above eight venues hosting matches.^[23] 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 Slovenia at the Stožice Stadium, Ljubljana.^[24]

Match officials

Country	Referee	1st assistant referee	2nd assistant referee
Belgium	Lawrence Visser	Thibaud Nijssen	Ruben Wyns
Bosnia and Herzegovina	Irfan Peljto	Davor Beljo	Senad Ibrišimbegović
Spain	Guillermo Cuadra Fernández	Íñigo Prieto López de Cerain	José Enrique Naranjo Pérez
Italy	Maurizio Mariani	Alberto Tegoni	Daniele Bindoni
Switzerland	Sandro Schärer	Stéphane De Almeida	Bekim Zogaj
Turkey	Halil Umut Meler	Mustafa Emre Eyisoy	Abdullah Bora Özkara
France	François Letexier	Cyril Mugnier	Mehdi Rahmouni
Georgia	Giorgi Kruashvili	Levan Varamishvili	Zaza Pipia
Germany	Harm Osmers	Eduard Beitinger	Dominik Schaal
Netherlands	Dennis Higler	Joost van Zuilen	Johan Balder
Poland	Bartosz Frankowski	Jakub Winkler	Dawid Golis
Sweden	Glenn Nyberg	Mahbod Beigi	Andreas Söderkvist

Fourth officials

Squads

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.^[3]

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):^[3]

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 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 were 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, 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	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Netherlands	3	1	2	0	8	3	+5	5^[a]	Advance to knockout stage
2	Germany	3	1	2	0	4	1	+3	5^[a]	Advance to knockout stage
3	Romania	3	1	2	0	3	2	+1	5^[a]
4	Hungary (H)	3	0	0	3	2	11	−9	0

Source: UEFA
Rules for classification: Tiebreakers
(H) Hosts
Notes:

^ ^a ^b ^c Tied on head-to-head points (2) and head-to-head goal difference (0). Head-to-head goals scored: Netherlands 2, Germany 1, Romania 1. Germany and Romania were ranked on overall goal difference.

24 March 2021

21:00

Hungary	0–3	Germany
	Report	Nmecha 61' Baku 66', 73'

MOL Aréna Sóstó, Székesfehérvár

Attendance: 0^[25]^{[note 1]}

Referee: Guillermo Cuadra Fernández (Spain)

24 March 2021