UEFA Women's Euro 2022

UEFA Women's Euro 2022
Tournament details
Host country	England
Dates	6–31 July 2022
Teams	16
Venue(s)	10 (in 8 host cities)

The 2022 UEFA European Women's Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Women's Euro 2022, will be the 13th edition of the UEFA Women's Championship, the quadrennial international football championship organised by UEFA for the women's national teams of Europe. It will be the second edition since it was expanded to 16 teams. The final tournament will be hosted by England and was originally scheduled to take place from 7 July to 1 August 2021.[1] However, following the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and subsequent postponements of the 2020 Summer Olympics and UEFA Euro 2020 to summer 2021, the tournament was rescheduled and will take place from 6 to 31 July 2022.[2][3][4] England last hosted the tournament in 2005, the last edition featuring eight teams.[5][6]

England will be the host team, the Netherlands will be the defending champions, and Northern Ireland will participate in a UEFA Women's Euro competition for the first time.

The video assistant referee (VAR), as well as goal-line technology, will be used in the final tournament.[7]

The final will take place at Wembley Stadium in London.

Host selection

England was the only country to submit a bid before the deadline.[8] They were confirmed as hosts at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Dublin, Republic of Ireland on 3 December 2018.[9][6][5]

Qualification

A total of 48 UEFA nations entered the competition (including Cyprus which entered for the first time at senior women's level, and Kosovo which entered their first Women's Euro), and with the hosts England qualifying automatically, the other 47 teams will compete in the qualifying competition to determine the remaining 15 spots in the final tournament.[10] Different from previous qualifying competitions, the preliminary round has been abolished and all entrants start from the qualifying group stage. The qualifying competition consists of two rounds:[11]

Qualifying group stage: The 47 teams are drawn into nine groups: two groups of six teams and seven groups of five teams. Each group is played in home-and-away round-robin format. The nine group winners and the three best runners-up (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) qualify directly for the final tournament, while the remaining six runners-up advance to the play-offs.
Play-offs: The six teams are drawn into three ties to play home-and-away two-legged matches to determine the last three qualified teams.

The draw for the qualifying group stage was held on 21 February 2019 in Nyon. The qualifying group stage took place from August 2019 to December 2020, while the play-offs took place in April 2021, previously scheduled for October 2020.[11][5]

Qualified teams

In February 2022, the Russian team was suspended following their country's invasion of Ukraine.[12] UEFA later announced on 2 May 2022 that Russian teams were banned from every European competition, disqualifying Russia from the Women's Euro 2022. Portugal, who Russia defeated in the play-off, would take the place of Russia.[13]

The following teams qualified for the final tournament.

Order	Team	Method of qualification	Date of qualification	Finals appearance	Last appearance	Previous best performance	FIFA ranking at start of draw
1	England	Hosts	3 December 2018	9th	2017	Runners-up (1984, 2009)	8th
2	Germany	Group I winners	23 October 2020	11th	2017	Champions (1989, 1991, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013)	3rd
3	Netherlands	Group A winners	23 October 2020	4th	2017	Champions (2017)	4th
4	Denmark	Group B winners	27 October 2020	10th	2017	Runners-up (2017)	15th
5	Norway	Group C winners	27 October 2020	12th	2017	Champions (1987, 1993)	12th
6	Sweden	Group F winners	27 October 2020	11th	2017	Champions (1984)	2nd
7	France	Group G winners	27 November 2020	7th	2017	Quarter-finals (2009, 2013, 2017)	5th
8	Belgium	Group H winners	1 December 2020	2nd	2017	Group Stage (2017)	19th
9	Iceland	Group F runners-up^{[^]}	1 December 2020	4th	2017	Quarter-finals (2013)	16th
10	Spain	Group D winners	18 February 2021	4th	2017	Semi-finals (1997)	10th
11	Finland	Group E winners	19 February 2021	4th	2013	Semi-finals (2005)	25th
12	Austria	Group G runners-up^{[^]}	23 February 2021	2nd	2017	Semi-finals (2017)	21st
13	Italy	Group B runners-up^{[^]}	24 February 2021	12th	2017	Runners-up (1993, 1997)	14th
-	~~Russia~~^[!]	qualifying play-offs winner (voided)	13 April 2021	5th	2017	Group Stage (1997, 2001, 2009, 2013, 2017)	15th
14	Switzerland	qualifying play-offs winner	13 April 2021	2nd	2017	Group Stage (2017)	20th
15	Northern Ireland	qualifying play-offs winner	13 April 2021	1st	Debut	-	48th
16	Portugal^[!]	qualifying play-offs	2 May 2022	2nd	2017	Group Stage (2017)	29th

Notes

^
The best three runners-up among all nine groups qualified directly for the final tournament.
^
Russia originally qualified by won 1–0 on aggregate, however, Russia were suspended by FIFA and UEFA on 28 February 2022. UEFA replaced Russia with Portugal on 2 May 2022.[14]

Final draw

The final draw of the groups took place in Manchester (England) on 28 October 2021 at 18:00 CEST.[15]

It was originally set on 6 November 2020, but had been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[16] The 16 teams will be drawn into 4 groups of 4 teams. The hosts will be assigned to position A1 in the draw, while the other teams will be seeded according to their coefficient ranking following the end of the qualifying stage, calculated based on the following:[17]

UEFA Women's Euro 2017 final tournament and qualifying competition (20%)
2019 FIFA Women's World Cup final tournament and qualifying competition (40%)
UEFA Women's Euro 2022 qualifying competition (group stage only, excluding play-offs) (40%)

Pot 1
Team	Coeff	Rank
England ^H	41,443	3
Netherlands ^TH	43,961	1
Germany	41,924	2
France	40,898	4

Pot 2
Team	Coeff	Rank
Sweden	39,714	5
Spain	38,913	6
Norway	38,758	7
Italy	36,399	8

Pot 3
Team	Coeff	Rank
Denmark	35,265	9
Belgium	34,951	10
Switzerland	33,693	11
Austria	33,693	12

Pot 4
Team	Coeff	Rank
Iceland	33,458	13
Finland	29,765	16
Portugal^[!]	28,937	17
Northern Ireland	19,526	27

^H Hosts (assigned to position A1 in the draw)
^TH Title holders

Notes

^
The draw originially contained Russia, but Russia were suspended by FIFA and UEFA on 28 February 2022, with Portugal being chosen by UEFA to take their place on 2 May 2022. This did not affect the draw, since both teams would be placed on pot 4.

Venues

Meadow Lane in Nottingham and London Road in Peterborough were initially included on the list of stadiums when the Football Association submitted the bid to host the tournament. These were changed with the City Ground in Nottingham and St Mary's in Southampton due to UEFA requirements.[18][19] The City Ground was replaced by Leigh Sports Village when the final list of venues was confirmed in August 2019.[20] On 23 February 2020, Old Trafford in Trafford (Greater Manchester) was confirmed as the venue of the opening match featuring England.[21] Wembley Stadium will host the final.

Officially UEFA announced 10 stadiums in 9 cities:[22][23][24]

Brighton & Hove
Leigh (Designated as "Wigan and Leigh" by UEFA)
London (2 stadiums)
Manchester (2 stadiums)
Milton Keynes
Rotherham
Sheffield
Southampton

London (Wembley)	Manchester (Old Trafford)	Sheffield	Southampton
Wembley Stadium	Old Trafford	Bramall Lane	St Mary's Stadium
Capacity: 90,000	Capacity: 74,879	Capacity: 32,702	Capacity: 32,505

Brighton and Hove	London Manchester Sheffield Southampton Brighton and Hove Milton Keynes Rotherham Leigh
Falmer Stadium
Capacity: 31,800

Milton Keynes
Stadium MK
Capacity: 30,500

London (Brentford)	Rotherham	Leigh	Manchester (Bradford)
Brentford Community Stadium	New York Stadium	Leigh Sports Village	Etihad Academy Stadium
Capacity: 17,250	Capacity: 12,021	Capacity: 12,000	Capacity: 7,000

Criticisms

Criticisms came regarding the geographic distribution of the host venues, with no stadiums being chosen in the North East or the Midlands.[25] Stadium size was also criticised, especially the 7,000 capacity Etihad Academy Stadium, which would be limited to 4,700 capacity for the tournament due to UEFA restrictions preventing the use of standing capacity. The choice to include the was labelled "embarrassing", "disrespectful", and did not reflect the growth of women's football.[26] The Leigh Sports Village would also be restricted to 8,100 instead of it's typical 12,000 capacity due to the same restrictions.[27]

Match officials

In April 2022, a pronouncement from UEFA identified the selected match officials' for the tournament.[28]

Referees

Jana Adámková
Emikar Caldera Barrera
Iuliana Demetrescu
Cheryl Foster
Stéphanie Frappart
Marta Huerta de Aza
Riem Hussein
Lina Lehtovaara
Ivana Martinčić
Kateryna Monzul
Tess Olofsson
Esther Staubli
Rebecca Welch

Assistant referees

Paulina Baranowska
Mary Blanco Bolívar
Elodie Coppola
Francesca Di Monte
Polyxeni Irodotou
Petruta Iugulescu
Karolin Kaivoja
Chrysoula Kourompylia
Susanne Küng
Sian Massey-Ellis
Manuela Nicolosi
Michelle O'Neill
Franca Overtoom
Guadalupe Porras Ayuso
Katrin Rafalski
Lisa Rashid
Lucie Ratajova
Sanja Rođak Karšić
Migdalia Rodríguez Chirino
Almira Spahic
Staša Špur
Maryna Striletska
Maria Sukenikova
Sara Telek
Anita Vad

Fourth officials

Ivana Projkovska
Lorraine Watson

VARs

Luís Miguel Branco Godinho
Guillermo Cuadra Fernández
Christian Dingert
Bartosz Frankowski
Dennis Higler
Chris Kavanagh
Tomasz Kwiatkowski
Tiago Lopes Martins
Maurizio Mariani
Benoît Millot
Harm Osmers
José María Sánchez Martínez
Paolo Valeri
Pol van Boekel
Maïka Vanderstichel

Squads

Each national team have to submit a squad of 23 players, three of whom must be goalkeepers. If a player is injured or ill severely enough to prevent her participation in the tournament before her team's first match, she can be replaced by another player.[11]

Group stage

The provisional match schedule was confirmed by the UEFA Executive Committee during their meeting in Nyon, Switzerland on 4 December 2019.[29]

The group winners and runners-up advance to the quarter-finals.

Tiebreakers

In the group stage, teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Articles 18.01 and 18.02):[11]

Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams have the same number of points, and they met in the last round of the group and are tied after applying all criteria above (not used if more than two teams have the same number of points, or if their rankings are not relevant for qualification for the next stage);
Disciplinary points (red card = 3 points, yellow card = 1 point, expulsion for two yellow cards in one match = 3 points);
UEFA coefficient ranking for the final draw.

All times are local, BST (UTC+1).[30]

Group A

Pos	Team	Qualification
1	England (H)	Knockout stage
2	Austria	Knockout stage
3	Norway
4	Northern Ireland

First match(es) will be played on 6 July 2022. Source: UEFA
Rules for classification: Tiebreakers
(H) Host

6 July 2022