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The 2016 UEFA European Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 or simply Euro 2016, will be the 15th edition of the UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe organized by UEFA. It is scheduled to be held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016. Spain are the two-time defending champions.
For the first time, the European Championship final tournament will be contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format that had been used since 1996. Under this new format, the finalists will contest a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage including three rounds and the final. As hosts, France have automatically qualified for the final tournament, while the other 53 national teams will compete in a qualifying competition, running from September 2014 to November 2015, to secure the remaining 23 places.
Four bids came before the deadline at 9 March 2009 which were France, Italy and Turkey as single bids each, plus Norway and Sweden as a joint bid. Norway and Sweden eventually withdrew their bid in December 2009.
Round 1: Each of the thirteen members of the UEFA Executive Committee ranked the 3 bids first, second, and third. First place ranking received 5 points, second place 2 points, and third place 1 point.
Round 2: The same thirteen-member committee voted for either of the two finalists.
The qualifying draw took place at the Palais des Congres Acropolis in Nice, on 23 February 2014, with the first matches being played in September 2014.
A total of 53 teams will compete for 23 places in the final tournament and join France, who have automatically qualified as hosts. Gibraltar competed in a European Championship qualifying for the first time since their affiliation to UEFA in 2013. The seeding pots were formed on the basis of the UEFA national team coefficients, with the Euro 2012 champions Spain and hosts France automatically top seeded.
The 53 national sides were drawn into eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. The group winners, runners-up, and the best third-placed team (with the results against the sixth-placed team discarded) qualify directly to the final tournament. The remaining eight third-placed teams will contest two-legged play-offs to determine the last four qualifiers.
The UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino stated in March 2012 that UEFA would review the qualification competition to ensure that it was not "boring". In September 2011, during UEFA's first ever full strategy meeting, Michel Platini proposed a qualification format involving two group stages, but the proposal was not accepted by the member associations. In May 2013, Platini confirmed a similar qualifying format would be again discussed during the September 2013 UEFA executive committee meeting in Dubrovnik.
The draw for the finals will take place at the Palais des Congrès de la Porte Maillot in Paris on 12 December 2015. The 24 teams will be drawn into six groups of four teams.
For the draw, the hosts France will be automatically placed in position A1. The other 23 qualified teams will be seeded into four pots of five (Pot 1) or six teams (Pots 2, 3 and 4). The title holders Spain will be seeded in Pot 1. The other 22 teams will be seeded according to the UEFA National team coefficients updated after the completion of qualifying.
Venues
Initially, twelve stadia were presented for the French bid, chosen on 28 May 2010. These venues were to be whittled down to nine by the end of May 2011, but it was suggested in June 2011 that eleven venues might be used. The French Football Federation had to choose which nine stadia would actually be used.
The choice for the first seven was undisputed – France's national stadium, the Stade de France, four newly constructed stadia in Lille, Lyon, Nice and Bordeaux, and those of the biggest cities, Paris and Marseille. The last two remaining places, after Strasbourg opted out for financial reasons following relegation, were chosen to be Lens and Nancy in the first round of voting, instead of Saint-Étienne and Toulouse, chosen as reserve stadia.
In June 2011, the number of host venues was increased to eleven because of the new tournament format which sees 24 teams taking part, instead of just 16. The decision means that the reserve cities of Toulouse and St-Étienne joined the list of hosts. However, in December 2011, Nancy announced its withdrawal from the tournament, after the stadium's renovation fell through, so ten host cities will now be used.
To accommodate the expansion from a 16 team finals tournament to 24 teams, the format will be changed from that used in 2012 with the addition of two extra groups in the group stage, and an extra round in the knockout stages. The six groups (A to F) would still contain four teams each, with the top two from each group still going through to the knockout stage. In the new format however, the four best third-ranked sides would also progress, leaving 16 teams going into the new round of 16 knockout stage, ahead of the usual quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, and only 8 teams going out at the group stage. The format is exactly the one which was applied to the 1986, 1990 and 1994 FIFA World Cups, with the exception of the absence of a third-place play-off.
This format generates a total of 51 games, compared with 31 games for the previous 16-team tournament, to be played over a period of 31 days. UEFA's general secretary Gianni Infantino previously described the format as "not ideal" due to the need for third-ranked teams in the group stage advancing, leading to a difficulty in preventing situations where teams might be able to know in advance what results they need to progress out of the group, lending to a lack of suspense for fans, or even the prospect of mutually beneficial collusion between teams.
Tiebreakers
If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches, the following tie-breaking criteria will be applied:
Higher number of points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
Superior goal difference resulting from the matches played between the teams in question;
Higher number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;
If, after having applied criteria 1 to 3, teams still have an equal ranking, criteria 1 to 3 are reapplied exclusively to the matches between the teams in question to determine their final rankings. If this procedure does not lead to a decision, criteria 5 to 9 apply;
Superior goal difference in all group matches;
Higher number of goals scored in all group matches;
If only two teams have the same number of points, and they are tied according to criteria 1–6 after having met in the last round of the group stage, their ranking is determined by a penalty shoot-out (this criteria is not used if more than two teams have the same number of points).
Fair play conduct (1 point for a single yellow card, 3 points for a red card as a consequence of two yellow cards, 3 points for a direct red card, 4 points for a yellow card followed by a direct red card);
Each national team have to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom must be goalkeepers, at least ten days before the opening match of the tournament. If a player is injured or ill severely enough to prevent his participation in the tournament before his team's first match, he can be replaced by another player.
The official logo was unveiled on 26 June 2013, during a ceremony at the Pavillon Cambon Capucines in Paris. Conceived by Portuguese agency Brandia Central, which also created the visual identity for the previous European Championship, the design is based on the theme "Celebrating the art of football". The logo depicts the Henri Delaunay trophy with the blue, white and red colours of the French flag, surrounded by a mixture of shapes and lines representing different artistic movements and football elements.
On 17 October 2013, UEFA announced the official slogan of the tournament: Le Rendez-Vous. Asked about its meaning, Jacques Lambert, chairman of the Euro 2016 organising committee, told that the slogan "is much more than a reminder of dates (...) and venues". He further explained that "UEFA is sending out an invitation to football fans throughout the world and to lovers of major events, an invitation to meet up and share the emotions of an elite-level tournament."
The official mascot of the tournament, a child superhero, was unveiled on 18 November 2014. The name of the mascot, "Super Victor", was chosen by the public over two other options, "Driblou" and "Goalix".
"adidas on board for UEFA EURO 2012". UEFA.com. Retrieved 10 April 2015. The long-term partnership between UEFA and adidas is to continue with rights granted to UEFA EURO 2012™ and 2016™ plus all other national-team competitions until 2017.
UEFA Euro 2016 official logo
France
Turkey
Italy
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