European Championship 2024: what you need to know about the qualifying tournament

At the end of March, the selection for UEFA Euro 2024 will start. The final part of the competition will be held in Germany, that is, the team of this country has already secured participation in the tournament. The remaining 23 tickets will be played by 53 European teams. According to the results of the draw, they are divided into 10 groups of 5 or 6 teams. To get to the Euro immediately, a team has to win 1st or 2nd place in their selection. The best betting sites already offer the opportunity to bet on group winners, as well as on the results of the matches of the first rounds.

Teams that fail to qualify directly have a chance of qualifying through the playoffs. The 12 teams with the highest ranking in the 2022/23 Nations League in their divisions will be invited there. These teams will form 3 fours, the winners of which will get the remaining tickets. The first team of the quartet according to the LN rating will play with the fourth, the second – with the third. Semi-finals and finals will be one match.

Interesting facts about the draw:

the Russian team was not allowed to the tournament because of the war in Ukraine;
when forming groups, some countries were separated for political reasons (Ukraine – Belarus, Kosovo – Serbia, Azerbaijan – Armenia, etc.);
in one group there could be only two teams from countries with a risk of severe weather conditions (Iceland, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Faroe Islands);
distance between countries was taken into account in order to minimize the number of long-haul flights within the same group.

Group stage matches will be played until November 21, 2023. Playoff games are scheduled for March 21 and 26, 2024.

The main thing about the finals of Euro 2024

If nothing extraordinary happens, the tournament will start on June 14, 2024 and will last exactly one month. Matches will be held in 10 German cities. Among all of the stadiums declared, only one did not host the matches of the World Cup, which took place in 2006. This is the Düsseldorf Merkur Spiel Arena. But the home stadium of Bayern Munich will go down in history as the first to host the matches of the final stage of the Euro twice in a row. This became possible thanks to the unusual format of the previous championship, held in several European countries at once.

At the group stage, the teams will play in 6 groups of 4 participants. 2 strongest teams go to 1/8 without any conditions. 4 more tickets to the playoffs will go to those who take third place in additional indicators. Combinations of pairs involving such teams directly depend on the groups from which they qualify. Starting from the knockout stage, in the event of a draw, the opponents will determine the strongest in extra time and, if necessary, a penalty shoot-out. Some of the best betting websites even accept bets on the winner of the tournament, although such bets seem very premature. For the beginning, you should at least be sure of the participants list.