2023 UEFA European Under-21 Championship Qualification

The 2023 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying competition was a men's under-21 football competition to determine the 14 teams that would be joining the automatically qualified co-hosts Romania and Georgia in the 2023 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final tournament.

Apart from Romania and Georgia, all remaining 53 UEFA member national teams entered the qualifying competition. Players born on or after 1 January 2000 are eligible to participate.

Format

The qualifying competition will consist of the following two rounds:

* Qualifying group stage: The 53 teams are drawn into nine groups: eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. Each group is played in home-and-away round-robin format. The nine group winners and the best runner-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) qualify directly for the final tournament, while the remaining eight runners-up advance to the play-offs.
* Play-offs: The eight teams are drawn into four ties to play home-and-away two-legged matches to determine the last four qualified teams.

Tiebreakers

In the qualifying group stage, teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 14.01):
#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;
#Away goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
#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 are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
#Goal difference in all group matches;
#Goals scored in all group matches;
#Away goals scored in all group matches;
#Wins in all group matches;
#Away wins in all group matches;
#Disciplinary points (red card = 3 points, yellow card = 1 point, expulsion for two yellow cards in one match = 3 points);
#UEFA coefficient ranking for the qualifying group stage draw.

To determine the best runner-up from the qualifying group stage, the results against the teams in sixth place are discarded. The following criteria are applied (Regulations Article 15.02):
#Points;
#Goal difference;
#Goals scored;
#Away goals scored;
#Wins;
#Away wins;
#Disciplinary points;
#UEFA coefficient ranking for the qualifying group stage draw.

Schedule

Qualifying group stage

Draw

Each group contained one team from each of Pots A–F (Pots A–E for five-team group). Based on the decisions taken by the UEFA Emergency Panel, the following teams would not be drawn in the same group.

* Armenia and Azerbaijan
* Gibraltar and Spain
* Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo
* Kosovo and Serbia
* Kosovo and Russia
* Russia and Ukraine

Groups

Group A

Group B

Group C

On 28 February 2022, FIFA and UEFA announced that Russia was suspended from all competitions. On 2 May 2022, UEFA announced that Russia would no longer be allowed to take part in the competition, that their previous results were nullified, and that Group C would continue with five teams.

Group D

Group E

Group F

Group G

Group H

Group I

Ranking of second-placed teams

Only the results of the second-placed teams against the first, third, fourth and fifth-placed teams in their group are taken into account, while results against the sixth-placed team in six-team groups are not included. As a result, eight matches played by each second-placed team are counted for the purposes of determining the ranking. The top-ranked team qualifies directly for the final tournament, while the other teams enter the play-offs.

Advanced teams

Play-offs

The draw for the play-offs was held on 21 June 2022 in Nyon, Switzerland.

Qualified teams

The following teams qualified for the final tournament.

''Note: All appearance statistics include only U-21 era (since 1978).''

Top goalscorers

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:UEFA European Under-21 Championship Qualification 2023
qualification

2021 in youth association football
2022 in youth association football
Under-21
Under-21
Sports events affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine