2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualification
The 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualifying competition was a men's under-19 football competition that determined the seven teams joining the automatically qualified hosts Finland in the 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament.
Apart from Finland, all remaining 54 UEFA member national teams entered the qualifying competition. Players born on or after 1 January 1999 were eligible to participate.
Format
The qualifying competition consisted of two rounds:- Qualifying round: Apart from Spain and Portugal, which received byes to the elite round as the teams with the highest seeding coefficient, the remaining 52 teams were drawn into 13 groups of four teams. Each group was played in single round-robin format at one of the teams selected as hosts after the draw. The 13 group winners and the 13 runners-up advanced to the elite round.
- Elite round: The 28 teams were drawn into seven groups of four teams. Each group was played in single round-robin format at one of the teams selected as hosts after the draw. The seven group winners qualified for the final tournament.
| Matchday | Matches |
| Matchday [|1] | 1 v 4, 3 v 2 |
| Rest days | — |
| Matchday 2 | 1 v 3, 2 v 4 |
| Rest days | — |
| Matchday 3 | 2 v 1, 4 v 3 |
Tiebreakers
In the qualifying round and elite round, teams were ranked according to points, and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings :- 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 are tied after applying all criteria above ;
- Disciplinary points ;
- UEFA coefficient for the qualifying round draw;
- Drawing of lots.
Qualifying round
Draw
The draw for the qualifying round was held on 13 December 2016, 10:00 CET, at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.The teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking, calculated based on the following:
- 2014 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition
- 2015 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition
- 2016 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition