Euro 2024: Five questions, five answers

2023-12-01 16:58:59, Sport CNA

Germany will be the host country of the European Football Championship, EURO 2024. This is the second time since 1988. The championship starts on June 14, with the opening match in Munich, and ends on July 14, 2024 with the final in Berlin.

Which countries have qualified?

A total of 24 national teams will participate in Euro2024. Apart from the team of the host country, that is, the German national team, so far the following have qualified: Albania, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Italy, Croatia, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, Switzerland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia. , Spain and the Czech Republic, Turkey and Hungary.

How are the remaining three determined?

The remaining three European Championship places will be determined at the end of March 2024 in three so-called "playoff" tournaments, each with four teams that qualified for the Nations League. (Nations League).

The twelve teams that will play for the remaining three places are: Georgia, Luxembourg, Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Greece, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Poland, Iceland and Wales.

In the final of the first of three qualifying tournaments, the winner of the duel between Wales and Finland will then face either Poland or Estonia, who will compete in the second semi-final on Road A.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Ukraine
Israel - Iceland.

What will be determined by the draw on December 2, 2023 in Hamburg?

The preliminary round groups will be drawn on December 2 (from 18:00 Berlin, Tirana, and Pristina time) at the Elba Philharmonic building in Hamburg.

The teams have been divided into four pots, depending on their performance in their qualifying group. The three teams qualified through the play-offs finish in the last pot 4.

Germany, as the organizer of the event, is the leader of Group A and will be one of the two teams in the opening match on June 14.

Whereas Albania, which participates for the second time in a European championship, is in the second pot, together with Hungary, Turkey, Romania, Denmark and Austria.

There is therefore a theoretical chance for Albania to open the European Championship against Germany.

How will tickets be allocated to fans of countries that have not yet qualified?

The first phase of the classification is therefore over. According to UEFA, there were around 20 million applications for around 1.2 million tickets.

After the preliminary round groups are determined on December 2, the next stage follows, in which about one million tickets are put on the market.

A further 500,000 tickets will go on sale after the play-off round in March.

In total there are about 2.7 million tickets for the 51 matches of the tournament. All tickets are personalized and will be in digital form only.

Former German National Footballer, Philipp Lahm, is the director of the German Football Association, DFB for the 2024 European Championship in Berlin

How are Germany and Albania expecting this event?

Germany, as hosts, is the only team that can schedule the preliminary round before the group draw: After the opening in Munich, the German team will play the other group games in Stuttgart (June 19) and Frankfurt am Main on June 23 .

However, due to the great disappointments in the 2018 and 2022 World Football Championships (where Germany was eliminated in the preliminary round in both), after the not very satisfactory result in the European 2021 (where it was disqualified as early as 1/16) and performance with hope during this year, the expectations of the host country are restrained. The tournament director Philipp Lahm, however, expressed satisfaction with the preparations, in the end, the support from the political side is great. "In general, I can already feel and see this support," he told DW.

Albania, on the other hand, which came first in its group, has big ambitions. The coach of the national team, the Brazilian Sylvinjo, said in an interview to the Italian media that "we can't stop there, we can't only think about the qualification in the European groups", but also about the quarter-finals of the World Cup./ DW