The 2021 UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship (also known as UEFA Women's Under-19 Euro 2021) was originally to be held as the 20th edition of the

UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship The UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship or simply UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship, is an annual competition in women's football for European national teams of players under 19 years of age. National under-19 teams whose countries belon ...

(24th edition if the Under-18 era is included), the annual international youth

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

championship organised by

UEFA The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; ; ) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach soccer, beach football in Europe and the List of transcontinental countries#A ...

for the women's under-19 national teams of Europe.

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

were originally to host the tournament between 21 July and 2 August 2021. A total of eight teams were originally to play in the tournament, with players born on or after 1 January 2002 eligible to participate. On 23 February 2021, UEFA announced that the tournament was cancelled due to the

COVID-19 pandemic in Europe The global COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Europe with its first confirmed case in Bordeaux, France, on 24 January 2020, and subsequently spread widely across the continent. By 17 March 2020, every country in Europe had confirmed a case, and al ...

. Same as previous editions held in odd-numbered years, the tournament would have acted as the UEFA qualifiers for the

FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup The FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup is an international association football tournament, organized by FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), for national teams of women under the age of 20. The tournament is held biennially. ...

. The top four teams of the tournament would have qualified for the

2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup The 2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup () was the 10th edition of the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, the biennial international women's youth football championship contested by the under-20 national teams of the member associations of FIFA, since its ...

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as the UEFA representatives. With the cancellation of the tournament, the UEFA Executive Committee nominated the four teams with the highest coefficient ranking at the time for the qualifying draw (

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and the

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) as UEFA representatives for the World Cup.

would have been the defending champions, having won the last tournament held in

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

, with the

2020 The year 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of even ...

edition cancelled due to the

. For that reason, UEFA announced on 23 February 2021 that this tournament was also cancelled.

Host selection

The timeline of host selection was as follows: *11 January 2019: bidding procedure launched *28 February 2019: deadline to express interest *27 March 2019: Announcement by UEFA that declaration of interest were received from 17 member associations to host one of the UEFA national team youth final tournaments (

UEFA European Under-19 Championship The UEFA European Under-19 Championship, or simply the Euro Under-19, is an annual football competition, contested by the European men's under-19 national teams of the UEFA member associations. Spain is the most successful team in this competit ...

UEFA European Under-17 Championship The UEFA European Under-17 Championship, or simply the Euro Under-17, is an annual Association football, football competition contested by the men's under-17 national teams of the UEFA member associations. Spain national under-17 football team, ...

UEFA Women's Under-17 Championship The UEFA European Women's Under-17 Championship or simply UEFA Women's Under-17 Championship, is an annual European championship football tournament, organized by UEFA, for national teams of women under age seventeen. The tournament was first play ...

) in 2021 and 2022 (although it was not specified which association were interested in which tournament) *28 June 2019: Submission of bid dossiers *24 September 2019: Selection of successful host associations by the UEFA Executive Committee at its meeting in

Ljubljana {{Infobox settlement , name = Ljubljana , official_name = , settlement_type = Capital city , image_skyline = {{multiple image , border = infobox , perrow = 1/2/2/1 , total_widt ...

For the UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship final tournaments of 2021 and 2022, Belarus and Czech Republic were selected as hosts respectively.

Qualification

A total of 50 UEFA nations entered the competition, and with the hosts Belarus qualifying automatically, the original format would have seen the other 49 teams competing in the qualifying competition, which consisted of two rounds: Qualifying round, which would have taken place in autumn 2020, and Elite round, which would have also taken place in spring 2021, to determine the remaining seven spots in the final tournament. However, due to the

, UEFA announced on 13 August 2020 that after consultation with the 55 member associations, the qualifying round was delayed to February 2021, and the elite round was abolished and replaced by play-offs, supposed to be contested in April 2021 by the 12 qualifying round group winners, the best runners-up, and the top seed by coefficient ranking,

(which originally received a bye to the elite round), to determine the teams qualifying for the final tournament.

Qualified teams

The following teams qualified for the final tournament. ''Note: All appearance statistics include only U-19 era (since 2002).''

Qualified teams for FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup

The following four teams from UEFA qualified for the

. :

¹ Bold indicates champions for that year. ''Italic'' indicates hosts for that year.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Uefa Women's Under-19 Championship 2021

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

Women's Under-19 Championship 2021 Uefa Women's Under-19 Championship 2021 in Belarusian football Under-19 Championship Women's Under-19 Championship 2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup qualification Association football events cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic