Countdown to Sweden 2009

As the Netherlands celebrated their second successive Under-21 title in Groningen the countdown to the 2009 UEFA European Under-21 Championship began in earnest. The 2007 edition was a huge success both on and off the pitch, leaving hosts Sweden with a tough act to follow. It is a challenge Under-21 coach Jörgen Lennartsson is relishing.

Big event
"We have to let people in Sweden know how big this tournament is," he told uefa.com. "They need to know how high the standard of football is and what big stars are playing in it. There isn't much difference between this and a [senior UEFA] European Championship so we can learn a lot from it - from the organisation which has been a real success, but on the football side as well. As host nation it will be very important to handle the pressure from the media and the nation. The Dutch team have done that very well."

Attendance record
An average of 22,000 watched the Netherlands' five games here with well over 200,000 people attending matches. That is a record at this level but Lennartsson, who works in tandem with Tommy Söderberg with the Under-21s, believes there is still room for improvement. "Absolutely, you can see interest in the tournament is growing more and more. But of course it's important the big footballing nations with lots of supporters and good players qualify. It is also a very good decision by UEFA to change the year of the final [to odd years] so it's not at the same time as the senior tournaments. We have to work very hard now to make sure the tournament in Sweden is as successful as here."

New stadiums
Sweden 2009 will have four principle host cities, Gothenburg, Helsingborg, Malmö and Borås, before attention switches to the national 36,800-seat Råsunda Stadion in Solna for the final. Stadiums in Malmö and Gothenburg are being built specifically for the tournament. "All four cities have a big football history and lots of spectators interested in football," said Lennartsson who watched the Netherlands beat Serbia 4-1 in Saturday's final on uefa.com. "Everything will be absolutely ready."

'Good friends'
That goes for his team as well. Sweden were famously eliminated from this year's competition by Serbia 5-3 on aggregate after winning the first leg 3-0 in Novi Sad. There was no shame in losing to an excellent Serbian side, and Lennartsson has wisely been using the past fortnight watching games and visiting training camps to learn from some of the teams here. "Normally when you lose 5-0 you don't want to be with the team you lost against but [Miroslav] Djukić is a very good coach and a big gentleman and we have built a very good relationship. We also visited Foppe de Haan at the Dutch training camp to see how they coped with not having any qualification games and having to play friendlies. Both coaches and teams in the final are good friends to us in Sweden."

Qualifying
In all 51 UEFA member associations will compete for a place in Sweden and qualification has already begun. Lennartsson knows, though, that for the event to truly take off one team in particular must succeed. "It will be a big event in Sweden," he said. "We will get some experience from this tournament in Holland, learn from that and work very, very hard to get the team ready. We must have a team that can play at a high level. We have two years to produce that and we are very positive about it." A nation expects.