Under-19 sides await draw
Thursday, January 24, 2002
Article summary
Thursday will see the draw for the 2002/03 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualifying round.
Article body
The draw for the qualifying round of the 2002/03 UEFA European Under-19 Championship will take place on Thursday 24 January in Porto.
Draw location
The Under-19 draw will be made at a ceremony which will also see the draw for the 2002/03 UEFA Under-17 European Championship draw. The event will begin at 17.00 local time in the Porto Palacio Hotel.
New format
At its last meeting, held in Nyon on 12/13 December 2001, the UEFA Executive Committee decided that from now on the youth competitions would be staged according to a new format.
Top six advance automatically
The top-six ranked countries in Europe according to performances in the last three tournaments qualify directly for the second qualifying round and will therefore not compete in the preliminary round. These sides are Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Republic of Ieland, Austria and Greece. Liechtenstein, who will host the final stage of the tournament in July 2003, have qualified automatically and will not need to take part in any qualification stages.
Draw procedure
The remaining 44 nations in the preliminary round draw have been split into two pots. Pot A will contain associations ranked from seven to 28, while Pot B will contain associations ranked from 29 to 50. The 44 associations will be drawn into 11 groups of four according to the following procedure:
Once Group 1 is completed the same procedure will be followed to form Groups 2 to 11.