U21 daily bulletin - Thursday

There will be a new name on the UEFA European Under-21 Championship trophy after the Netherlands and Ukraine won their semi-final matches. 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), with the Netherlands designated as the home team in the showpiece.

Both finalists have confirmed their pre-match press activities, which are listed below:

Referee:

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 reached 160,592 following the semi-finals, shattering the previous record of 110,000 set in the 2004 competition in Germany - a tournament which saw 16 games, one more than this one where there is no third-placed play-off.

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)
FRA v NED: 7,887 (Braga)
UKR v SCG: 17,357 (Aveiro)

Pascal Cornu, UEFA Under-21 competition manager said: "The Portuguese people have proved once again their passion for football as the attendances have shown." FPF tournament director João Morais added: "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, if the final is a draw at the end of normal playing time, two 15-minute periods of extra time will be played. If the 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, visited schools in Braga and Aveiro on Thursday morning before travelling to the Estádio Municipal de Braga and the Estádio Municipal de Aveiro. 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 have picked up Carlsberg Man of the Match awards:
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)
FRA v NED: Nicky Hofs (Netherlands)
UKR v SCG: Andriy Pyatov (Ukraine)

Top scorer: Denmark's Thomas Kahlenberg tops the scoring list with three goals from as many matches. Bryan Bergougnoux of France took his tally to two against the Dutch but has also gone home. Klaas Jan Huntelaar and Nicky Hofs of the Netherlands and Ukraine duo Artem Milevskiy and Ruslan Fomin have also scored twice and are the leading contenders to wrest the top scorer title from Kahlenberg. Twenty players have scored one goal, while there have also been two own goals - both from Portugal.

Fair Play: Denmark and the Netherlands jointly led the Fair Play ranking after the end of the group stage, closely followed by Ukraine. The full ranking after three games was:

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 were wiped out for the knockout stage and as no players received red cards in the final round of group matches, all were eligible for selection for the semi-finals. All Dutch and Ukrainian players are eligible for Sunday's final.

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.