Tournament details | |
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Dates | 22 March 2013 – 14 October 2014 |
Teams | 52 (from 1 confederation) |
Tournament statistics | |
Matches played | 234 |
Goals scored | 790 (3.38 per match) |
Top scorer(s) | Saido Berahino (10 goals) |
The 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship started with a qualifying competition which began in March 2013 and finished in September 2014. The final tournament was held in the Czech Republic. The draw for the qualifying rounds was held on 31 January 2013 in Nyon, with matches played between March 2013 and September 2014.
There were ten groups. Two of these groups had six teams; the remaining eight groups consisted of five teams. Group competition was a double round robin: each team hosted a game with every other team in its group. At the conclusion of qualifying, the 10 teams at the top of each group and four best second-placed teams qualified for the two-legged play-offs scheduled in October 2014, with the seven winners of the play-off ties joining Czech Republic in the finals.
A total of fifty-two participating teams were divided in five draw pots based on the UEFA Under-21 coefficient ranking. Pots A through D contained ten teams, while pot E twelve teams.
Before the draw UEFA confirmed that, for political reasons, Armenia would not be drawn against Azerbaijan (due to the dispute concerning territory of Nagorno-Karabakh) and Georgia would not be drawn against Russia (due to the dispute regarding the territory of South Ossetia and Abkhazia) in the qualifiers for 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Football Championship.
If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following criteria are applied to determine the rankings.
Because some groups contain six teams and some five, matches against the sixth-placed team in each group are not included in this ranking. As a result, eight matches played by each team will count for the purposes of the second-placed table.
The following criteria are applied to determine the rankings.