2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship

2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship
Mistrovství Evropy ve fotbale hráčů do 21 let 2015
Tournament details
Host country	Czech Republic
Dates	17–30 June
Teams	8 (from 1 confederation)
Venue(s)	4 (in 3 host cities)
Final positions
Champions	Sweden (1st title)
Runners-up	Portugal
Tournament statistics
Matches played	15
Goals scored	37 (2.47 per match)
Attendance	162,994 (10,866 per match)
Top scorer(s)	Jan Kliment (3 goals)
Best player(s)	William Carvalho
	← 2013 2017 →

The 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship was the 20th edition of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship, a biennial international football competition for men's under-21 national teams organised by UEFA. The final tournament was hosted for the first time in the Czech Republic from 15 to 30 June 2015, after their bid was selected by the UEFA Executive Committee on 20 March 2012 in Istanbul.^[1]

Players born on or after 1 January 1992 were eligible to participate in the competition.^[2] Fifty-two teams participated in a qualification tournament, taking place between March 2013 and October 2014, to determine the seven teams that would join the final tournament hosts. Holders Spain were not able to defend their title after being eliminated in the qualification play-offs by Serbia.

In the final, played at the Eden Arena in Prague, Sweden defeated Portugal 4–3 in a penalty shootout, after a goalless draw at the end of extra-time. In doing so, the Swedish team won their first title in this competition, having previously lost the 1992 final, and secured their first-ever title in UEFA youth competitions on the men's side.

By reaching the semi-finals, Denmark, Germany, Portugal and Sweden also qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics men's football tournament in Brazil.^[3]

Qualification

Qualification for the final tournament of the 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship consisted of two rounds: a group stage and a play-off round. The group stage draw took place on 31 January 2013 in Nyon, Switzerland, and distributed 52 national teams into ten groups of five or six teams. Each group was contested in a double round-robin system, where teams played each other twice, at home and away. The ten group winners and the four best second-placed teams advanced to the play-off round, where they were paired by draw into seven two-legged ties. The play-off winners joined the Czech Republic in the final tournament.^[4]

Qualified teams

The following teams qualified for the 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament:

Country	Qualified as	Previous appearances in tournament¹ only U-21 era (since 1978)
Czech Republic	Hosts	11 (1978⁵, 1980⁵, 1988⁵, 1990⁵, 1992⁵, 1994⁵, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2011)
Denmark	Playoff winner (against Iceland)	5 (1978, 1986, 1992, 2006, 2011)
England	Playoff winner (against Croatia)	12 (1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013)
Germany	Playoff winner (against Ukraine)	11 (1982², 1984², 1988², 1990², 1992, 1996, 1998, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2013)
Italy	Playoff winner (against Slovakia)	17 (1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2013)
Portugal	Playoff winner (against Netherlands)	6 (1994, 1996, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007)
Serbia	Playoff winner (against Spain)	8 (1978³, 1980³, 1984³, 1990³, 2004⁴, 2006⁴, 2007, 2009)
Sweden	Playoff winner (against France)	6 (1986, 1990, 1992, 1998, 2004, 2009)

¹ Bold indicates champion for that year. Italic indicates host for that year.

² As West Germany

³ As Yugoslavia

⁴ As Serbia and Montenegro

⁵ As Czechoslovakia

Venues

The competition was played at four venues in three host cities: Eden Arena and Generali Arena (in Prague), Andrův stadion (in Olomouc), and Stadion Miroslava Valenty (in Uherské Hradiště).^[5]^[6]

Prague		Olomouc	Uherské Hradiště
Eden Arena	Generali Arena	Andrův stadion	Stadion Miroslava Valenty
50°4′3″N 14°28′18″E / 50.06750°N 14.47167°E / 50.06750; 14.47167 (Eden Arena)	50°5′59.3″N 14°24′57.3″E / 50.099806°N 14.415917°E / 50.099806; 14.415917 (Generali Arena)	49°36′0″N 17°14′54″E / 49.60000°N 17.24833°E / 49.60000; 17.24833 (Andrův stadion)	49°3′56″N 17°28′17.3″E / 49.06556°N 17.471472°E / 49.06556; 17.471472
Capacity: 20,800	Capacity: 19,784	Capacity: 12,566	Capacity: 8,121

Match officials

Six refereeing teams took charge of matches at the final tournament:^[7]

Country	Referee	Assistant referees	Additional assistant referees
France	Clément Turpin	Frédéric Cano Nicolas Danos	Fredy Fautrel Nicolas Rainville
Greece	Anastasios Sidiropoulos	Damianos Efthymiadis Polychronis Kostaras	Michael Koukoulakis Stavros Tritsonis
Netherlands	Danny Makkelie	Mario Diks Hessel Steegstra	Kevin Blom Jochem Kamphuis
Poland	Szymon Marciniak	Paweł Sokolnicki Tomasz Listkiewicz	Paweł Raczkowski Tomasz Musiał
Russia	Sergei Karasev	Anton Averyanov Tikhon Kalugin	Sergey Lapochkin Sergei Ivanov
Spain	Javier Estrada Fernández	Miguel Martínez Munuera Teodoro Sobrino Magán	Alejandro Hernández Hernández Jesús Gil Manzano

Country	Fourth officials
Czech Republic	Jan Paták Ondrej Pelikan

Seeding

The draw for the final tournament took place at 18:00 CET on 6 November 2014, at the Clarion Congress Hotel in Prague. England, the highest-ranked team according to the competition coefficient rankings, and the host team, Czech Republic, were seeded and automatically assigned to separate groups. The second and third-ranked teams in the coefficient rankings, Italy and Germany, were also seeded and drawn into separate groups, while the four unseeded teams were drawn into the remaining positions of the two groups.^[2]^[8]

Top seeds	Second seeds	Unseeded
Czech Republic (assigned to A1) England (assigned to B1)	Italy Germany	Portugal Denmark Sweden Serbia

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.^[2]

Format of competitions

The eight finalists were drawn into two groups of four teams. As hosts, Czech Republic were seeded in group A, while England, the best-ranked team in the UEFA coefficient ranking, were seeded in group B. In each group, teams played matches against each other in a round-robin system, and the top two teams advanced to the semi-finals.^[9]^[10]

The provisional schedule was released by UEFA on 10 November 2014,^[11] and confirmed on 2 December 2014.^[12]^[13] All times are in Central European Summer Time (UTC+02:00).

After the conclusion of the group stage, the following four teams from UEFA qualified for the Olympic football tournament.

Tie-breaking

If two or more teams were equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following tie-breaking criteria were applied:^[2]

Higher number of points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
Superior goal difference resulting from the matches played between the teams in question;
Higher number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;

If, after having applied criteria 1 to 3, teams still had an equal ranking, criteria 1 to 3 were reapplied exclusively to the matches between the teams in question to determine their final rankings. If this procedure did not lead to a decision, criteria 4 to 6 were applied.

Superior goal difference in all group matches;
Higher number of goals scored in all group matches;
Position in the UEFA under-21 coefficient ranking used for the final draw.

If only two teams were tied (according to criteria 1–5) after having met in the last match of the group stage, their ranking would have been determined by a penalty shoot-out.

Group A

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Group stage result
1	Denmark	3	2	0	1	4	4	0	6	Advance to knockout stage and 2016 Summer Olympics
2	Germany	3	1	2	0	5	2	+3	5	Advance to knockout stage and 2016 Summer Olympics
3	Czech Republic (H)	3	1	1	1	6	3	+3	4
4	Serbia	3	0	1	2	1	7	−6	1

Source: UEFA
Rules for classification: tie-breaking
(H) Hosts

17 June 2015

18:00

Czech Republic	1–2	Denmark
Kadeřábek 35'	Report	Vestergaard 56' Sisto 84'

Eden Arena, Prague

Attendance: 15,987^[14]

Referee: Szymon Marciniak (Poland)

17 June 2015