A National under-21 football team represents the second-highest stage in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
an
international football competition. Only Europe (
UEFA
Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...
) uses an under-21 age limit, and only for men.
FIFA, the sport's worldwide governing body, runs competitions for both
men
A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chro ...
and
women
A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...
in the under-20 age group. Among FIFA's continental confederations,
CONCACAF
The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football,, ; french: Confédération de football d'Amérique du Nord, d'Amérique centrale et des Caraïbes, . Dutch language, Dutch uses the English name. abbreviated as CON ...
and
CONMEBOL hold U-20 championships for men, while the
Asian Football Confederation
The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly i ...
(AFC) and
Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) do not conduct U-20 championships, with their highest youth competitions for men being at under-19 level. For women, UEFA and the AFC run under-19 championships instead of under-20; CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, and the OFC run under-20 championships; and the CAF's under-20 "championship" is strictly a World Cup qualifier and currently has no championship match, as that confederation receives more than one berth in the U-20 Women's World Cup.
European countries compete for the
UEFA Under-21 Championship. To be eligible in U-21 teams it is necessary to be a maximum of 21 years old when the competition starts.
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Under-21 Football Team
Under-21 association football