U21 daily bulletin - Wednesday

There will be a new name on the UEFA European Under-21 Championship trophy after the Netherlands and Ukraine won their semi-final matches tonight. Nicky Hofs scored twice and Klaas Jan Huntelaar the other - "a beauty" according to his coach Foppe de Haan - as the Dutch defeated France 3-2 after extra time in Braga. There may have been no goals but the drama was as unrelenting in Aveiro as Ukraine saw off Serbia and Montenegro 5-4 on penalties after 120 goalless minutes.

Porto will stage the final of the eight-team tournament at the Estádio do Bessa Século XXI on Sunday (19.45).

Alberto Undiano of Spain and Howard Webb of England have been chosen to referee the semi-finals. In all, the six referees and eight assistants gathered in Portugal will have been in the middle for 15 games, culminating in the final on Sunday.

TV audience figures: International viewing figures continue to impress. The Netherlands victory against Italy on Monday attracted a 23.8 per cent market share for Talpa in the Netherlands. RAI 2 produced impressive audiences of approximately four million per match for Italy's group stage matches. In Portugal, host broadcaster TVI returned great audience and market share figures for the three matches featuring the home team, with 2.3 million (60.1 per cent), 2.0 million (56.9 per cent) and 1.9 million (58.4 per cent) respectively. The market shares in Portugal remain strong, despite the exit of the hosts, with 28.2 per cent for the Netherlands v Italy match.

Record attendances: The UEFA European Under-21 Championship in Portugal has received an emphatic vote of confidence from the football public. Attendance figures surpassed the 111,000 mark set in 2004 following Sunday night's third round of matches in Group A, the ninth and tenth games at these finals. It took the 2004 championship in Germany 16 matches to achieve its total, and although Portugal will witness one game less with 15 fixtures overall – the third-placed play-off having been discarded – an U21 finals record is guaranteed. Monday's two decisive Group B encounters then left the tally of spectators so far at 135,348.

For each game, the attendances have been as follows:
SCG v GER: 3,245 (Barcelos)
POR v FRA: 26,875 (Braga)
UKR v NED: 4,250 (Agueda)
ITA v DEN: 11,250 (Aveiro)
FRA v GER: 8,023 (Guimaraes)
POR v SCG: 9,968 (Barcelos)
DEN v NED: 8,021 (Aveiro)
ITA v UKR: 6,873 (Agueda)
FRA v SCG: 8,585 (Braga)
GER v POR: 28,174 (Guimaraes)
DEN v UKR: 5,784 (Agueda)
NED v ITA: 14,300 (Aveiro)

Pascal Cornu, UEFA Under-21 competition manager said: "The tournament has shown a top-level quality of football and I am sure it will be the same for the final three matches. The Portuguese people have proved once again their passion for football as the attendances have shown." FPF tournament director João Morais: "We are all very excited. UEFA and ourselves are very pleased about achieving these figures. It was really a big challenge because Germany was a great tournament, a very successful one."

Competition format: Amendments have been made since the initial publication of the 2004/06 UEFA European Under-21 Championship competition regulations. As per the decision of the UEFA Executive Committee, for both the semi-finals and final, if the result is a draw at the end of normal playing time, two 15-minute periods of extra time will be played. If the two teams are still equal after extra time, the winners will be determined by kicks from the penalty mark.

Commercial programme: This is the first tournament in the new UEFA EUROTOP programme, and the commercial set-up for this event has ten global sponsors, supported by four local Portuguese companies, who are all running extensive promotional activities to bring the event to the fans. The ten global sponsors are adidas, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Continental, CTT, Ford, JVC, MasterCard, McDonald’s and Montepio, while Sical, SportZone, TMN and Galp comprise the four local partners.

The UEFA U21 Caravan, featuring games, competitions, inflatables and music, will visit schools in Braga and Aveiro on Thursday morning. Later that day, it will be at the Estádio Municipal de Braga at 14.30 and the Estádio Municipal de Aveiro at 16.00. The Caravan will make its final stop at the Estádio do Bessa Século XXI in Porto on Sunday afternoon, having been in Porto city centre that morning.

Man of the Match: The following players picked up Carlsberg Man of the Match awards in the group stage:
SCG v GER: Lukas Sinkiewicz (Germany)
POR v FRA: Jimmy Briand (France)
UKR v NED: Artem Milevskiy (Ukraine)
ITA v DEN: Rasmus Würtz (Denmark)
FRA v GER: Rio Antonio Mavuba (France)
POR v SCG: Milan Stepanov (Serbia and Montenegro)
DEN v NED: Thomas Kahlenberg (Denmark)
ITA v UKR: Giorgio Chiellini (Italy)
FRA v SCG: Lassana Diarra (France)
GER v POR: Nélson (Portugal)
DEN v UKR: Artem Milevskiy (Ukraine)
NED v ITA: Daniël de Ridder (Netherlands)

Top scorer: Denmark's Thomas Kahlenberg tops the scoring list with three goals from as many matches, although the Scandinavian side are now eliminated. Artem Milevskiy and Ruslan Fomin have each scored twice for Ukraine. Nineteen players have scored one goal, while there have also been two own goals - both from Portugal.

Fair Play: Denmark and the Netherlands jointly lead the Fair Play ranking after the end of the group stage, closely followed by Ukraine. The full ranking after three games each is as follows:

DEN: 8.095
NED: 8.095
UKR: 7.916
FRA: 7.904
GER: 7.892
ITA: 7.238
SCG: 7.238
POR: 6.916

Bookings list: All yellow cards have been wiped out for the knockout stage and as no players received red cards in the final round of group matches, all are eligible for selection for the semi-finals.

uefa.com coverage: uefa.com, fully developed in-house in seven languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian), is offering extensive content from UEFA's flagship youth tournament - from exclusive interviews and news to practical information for supporters, scouts and the international media. For this competition, uefa.com is using its popular Match Centre application to provide up-to-date information from the games as they happen, with goal updates, statistics, reports, reviews and news. There will also be live audio from all 15 finals matches.

Quicklinks: A media information guide is being updated daily on uefa.com, providing times of press conferences and training. It can be accessed by clicking here. The full addresses of the tournament base in Porto and each of the teams' hotels can be found here. Information for scouts is available here.