Stockholm to stage 2009 draw
Monday, February 12, 2007
Article summary
The eight teams who will contest this summer's U21 Championship are among 51 member associations awaiting this afternoon's draw for the 2009 finals.
Article body
Five pots
The Hilton Stockholm Slussen Hotel will stage the event, with proceedings set to commence from 14.00CET. Sweden qualify automatically for the finals, leaving 51 other contenders to be allocated into the following five pots - based on their coefficients - for the draw:
A: Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Serbia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain.
B: Russia, England, Croatia, Israel, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Slovenia.
C: Turkey, Greece, Poland, Belarus, Norway, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iceland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova.
D: Austria, Latvia, Wales, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, F.Y.R. Macedonia, Georgia, Armenia, Albania, Finland.
E: Scotland, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Malta, San Marino, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Montenegro.
Montenegro first
The Netherlands are the only seeded team, having won the 2006 final in Porto, and are joined in the top pot by five of the sides who will attempt to dethrone them on home soil in June - Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Serbia and the Czech Republic. The remaining 2007 finalists, England and Israel, are in pot B. The draw will feature Montenegro for the first time, after the country was accepted as a member association at the UEFA congress in Dusseldorf at the end of January.
Play-offs
Having been drawn into nine groups of five and one of six, the teams will do battle over ten matchdays (scheduled to take place between 2 June this year and 10 September 2008) in a bid to reach the play-offs. These will be contested by the ten group winners and four best runners-up from the qualifying competition, with the seven winners of the two-legged ties joining Sweden in the final tournament.