2023 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualification
The 2023 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 Malta in the 2023 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament. Players born on or after [|1] January 2004 were eligible to participate.
Russia were originally scheduled to participate in the competition before being excluded due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, while Liechtenstein opted not to participate. This meant that the tournament featured 52 of the remaining 54 UEFA member association national teams. Qualification consisted of a qualifying round in autumn 2022 followed by an elite round in spring 2023.
Format
The qualifying competition consisted of the following two rounds:Qualifying Round: Apart from Portugal, which received a bye to the elite round as the team with the highest seeding coefficient, the remaining 51 teams were drawn in twelve groups of four teams and one group of three teams. Each group was played in single round-robin format at one of the teams selected as hosts after the draw. The thirteen group winners, thirteen runners-up, and the third placed team with the best record against the first and second-placed teams in their group 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.The schedule of each group was as follows, with two rest days between each matchday :
Group Schedule
| Matchday | Matches |
| Matchday 1 | 1 v 4, 3 v 2 |
| Matchday 2 | 1 v 3, 2 v 4 |
| Matchday 3 | 2 v 1, 4 v 3 |
Tiebreakers
In the qualifying and elite round, teams were ranked according to [Three Three points for a win|points for a win|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 were tied after applying all criteria above
- Disciplinary points
- UEFA coefficient ranking for the qualifying round draw
- Points
- Goal difference
- Goals scored
- Disciplinary points
- UEFA coefficient ranking for the qualifying round draw
Qualifying round
Draw
The draw for the qualifying round was held on 8 December 2021, at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.The teams were seeded according to their coefficient ranking, calculated based on the following:
- 2016 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition
- 2017 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition
- 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition
- 2019 UEFA European Under-19 Championship final tournament and qualifying competition
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