Euro 2016: The 24 Finalists Confirmed

This week, we learned the 24 teams that will compete in next year’s Euro 2016 tournament:

• France (Hosts)
• Spain (Defending Champions)
• Albania
• Austria
• Belgium
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• England
• Germany
• Hungary
• Iceland
• Italy
• Northern Ireland
• Poland
• Portugal
• Republic of Ireland
• Romania
• Russia
• Slovakia
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• Wales

Partly due to the increase in number of teams that can compete in this tournament (up from 16 in 2012), the finals see five new sides who haven’t been here before: Albania, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Slovakia and Wales – although you could claim the latter isn’t exactly “new” to it.

In 1976, Wales did actually reach the quarter-finals of the tournament, beating beaten by Yugoslavia over two legs – but this year, the finals only consisted of the semi-finals and finals – therefore technically, this is the first appearance in the finals for Wales. Couldn’t keep things simple, could they?

One notable omission is Holland, who suffered a terrible qualifying campaign – despite being the highest ranked among their group (which also featured Iceland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Latvia and Kazakhstan), they only managed to finish fourth – and thus won’t appear in a major tournament for the first time since the 2002 World Cup (and the first Euro tournament they miss since 1984, also held in France – albeit next time around, in 1988, they won it – a sign for 2020, perhaps?).

In this new format, there will be two new groups formed – so there’ll be a Group A to Group F (Group D was previously the last group). The top two from each Group will go through to the knockout stages (12 teams), and they’ll be joined by the four best third-placed teams from each group, which will then give us the full 16 through to the next stage.

The tournament runs from 10th June until 10th July, when the final will be played. The draw for the Group stages will be made on Saturday 12th December, 2015.

Ashley Redman
Still understanding the new format