1990 UEFA European Under-21 Championship
The 1990 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, which spanned two years, had 30 entrants. San Marino competed for the first time. USSR U-21s won the competition.
The 30 national teams were divided into eight groups. The group winners played off against each other on a two-legged home-and-away basis until the winner was decided. There was no finals tournament or 3rd-place playoff.
Qualifying stage
Draw
The allocation of teams into qualifying groups was based on that of 1990 FIFA World Cup qualification with several changes, reflecting the absence of some nations:- Groups 1 and 2 featured the same nations
- Group 3 did not include Iceland
- Group 4 did not include Wales, but included Iceland
- Group 5 did not include Cyprus
- Group 6 did not include Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Malta, but included Cyprus
- Group 7 did not include Switzerland
- Group 8 composed of Switzerland, Italy and San Marino
Knockout stage
Quarter-finals
First leg
--------
----
Second leg
--------
----
Semi-finals
First leg
----Second leg
----Goalscorers
;3 goals;2 goals
- Giovanni Stroppa
- Kennet Andersson
- Tomas Brolin
- Ulrik Jansson
- Igor Shalimov
- Igor Dobrovolskiy
- Alen Bokšić
- Horst Siegl
- Christian Hochstätter
- Pierluigi Casiraghi
- Marco Simone
- Fernando Hierro
- Ricardo Mendiguren
- Stefan Rehn
- Dmitriy Chugunov
- Igor Kolyvanov
- Andrey Kanchelskis
- Sergey Kiryakov
- Aleksandr Mostovoi
- Zvonimir Boban
- Robert Jarni
- Robert Prosinečki