2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship


The 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship was the 22nd edition of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship, the biennial international youth football championship organised by UEFA for the men's under-21 national teams of Europe. The final tournament was hosted by Italy in mid-2019, after their bid was selected by the UEFA Executive Committee on 9 December 2016 in Nyon, Switzerland.
A total of twelve 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 [Football at the Football at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Men's tournament|2020 Summer Olympics – Men's tournament|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 stage of this championship. For the first time, the video assistant referee system was used at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship.
Germany were the defending champions.
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Hosts

In 2015 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 54 teams competed in the qualifying competition to determine the remaining eleven 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 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.
TeamMethod of qualificationDate of qualificationAppearanceLast appearancePrevious best performance
9 12 201620th2017
6 9 201814th2017
7 9 20189th2006
15th2017
11th2017
12th2017
15.10.20183rd2004
8th2017
3rd2007
2nd1998
7th2017 Quarter-finals
1st—Debut

;Notes

Final draw

The final draw was held on 23 November 2018, 18:00 CET, at the Lamborghini headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, hosted by Mia Ceran and 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:
Each group contained either the hosts or one team from Pot 1, and one team from Pot [|2] and two teams from Pot 3. The draw pots were as follows:
Team
37,774
35,533
35,182

Venues

On 9 December 2016, Italian Football Federation pre-selected venues :

Match officials

CountryReferee1st assistant referee2nd assistant referee
Aleksei KulbakovDzmitry ZhukAleh Maslianka
Georgi KabakovMartin MargaritovDiyan Valkov
Orel GrinfeldRoy HassanIdan Yarkoni
Andris TreimanisHaralds GudermanisAleksejs Spasjonņikovs
Serdar GözübüyükCharles SchaapJan de Vries
István KovácsOvidiu ArteneVasile Marinescu
Bobby MaddenFrancis ConnorDavid Roome
Srđan JovanovićUroš StojkovićMilan Mihajlović
Andreas EkbergMehmet CulumStefan Hallberg

Video Assistant Referees

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 [Football at the 2020 Football at the Summer Olympics|Summer Olympics – Men's tournament|2020 Summer Olympics].
;Tiebreakers
In the group stage, teams were ranked according to points, and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria would be applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings :
  1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
  2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
  3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
  4. 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;
  5. Goal difference in all group matches;
  6. Goals scored in all group matches;
  7. 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 ;
  8. Disciplinary points ;
  9. Position in the UEFA under-21 national team coefficient ranking for the final draw.
All times are local, CEST.

Group A


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Group B


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Group C


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Ranking of second-placed teams

The match-ups of the semi-finals depended on which runners-up qualified :
Best runners-up fromBest runners-up playOther semi-final
Group AWinners of Group BWinners of Group A vs Winners of Group C
Group BWinners of Group AWinners of Group B vs Winners of Group C
Group CWinners of Group AWinners of Group B vs Winners of Group C

Knockout stage

In the knockout stage, extra time and a penalty shoot-out were used to decide the winners if necessary.

Semi-finals

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Awards

The following awards were given at the conclusion of the tournament:

Team of the tournament

After the tournament the Under-21 Team of the Tournament was selected by the UEFA Technical Observers.
PositionPlayer
Goalkeeper Alexander Nübel
Defenders Lukas Klostermann
Defenders Jonathan Tah
Defenders Jesús Vallejo
Defenders Benjamin Henrichs
Midfielders Fabián Ruiz
Midfielders Mahmoud Dahoud
Midfielders Dani Olmo
Midfielders Luca Waldschmidt
Midfielders Dani Ceballos
Forward George Pușcaș

Qualified teams for 2020 Summer Olympics

The following four teams from UEFA qualified for the 2020 Summer Olympic men's football tournament.
TeamQualified onPrevious appearances in Summer Olympics1
22 6 201910
23 6 20199
24 6 20193
24 6 201912

England were ineligible for the Olympics as they are not an Olympic nation. Had they reached the semi-finals, the last Olympic spot would have gone to the winner of an Olympic play-off match, scheduled to be played at Stadio Dino Manuzzi, Cesena on 28 June 2019, 21:00 CEST, between the two group runners-up which did not qualify for the semi-finals. However, when England failed to advance out of the group stage, this match was cancelled.

International broadcasters

Television

All 21 matches were live streamed for the unsold markets via UEFA.tv and highlights were also available for all territories around the world via the UEFA YouTube channel.