Early Euro 2012 Qualification

Overview

The Early Euro 2012 qualification was a soccer tournament held between August 2010 and November 2011. A total of 51 national teams from the United Nations participated in the qualifying matches for the final round of the European Football Championship 2012.

Host Teams

The two host teams, Ukraine and Poland, were directly qualified to participate in the final tournament. This was due to their automatic qualification as hosts of the Euro 2012 championship, which was held in Ukraine and Poland.

Qualification Mode

The remaining 51 member countries of UEFA played out the 14 remaining starting places for the 2012 European Championships through qualifying matches. The teams were divided into nine groups, with six teams in groups A to F and five teams each in groups G to I.

Each team played against its group opponents in a home-and-away format, with three points awarded for a win and one point for a draw. If two or more teams were equal on points after the group stage, the following criteria were used to determine their ranking:

* Direct comparison (number of points, goal difference)
* Goal difference
* Number of goals scored

Draw and Group Stage

The draw for the qualifying groups took place on 7 February 2010 at the Congress Hall in Warsaw, Poland. The teams were selected based on UEFA's coefficient rankings, which were determined by their performance in the following tournaments:

* Early Euro (40%)
* Euro 2

Participants

A total of 51 national teams participated in the qualifying matches for the Early Euro 2012 qualification. This included Montenegro, which made its debut in European Championship qualification after joining UEFA in 2006.

Timeline

The qualifying matches took place between August 2010 and November 2011. The final tournament was held in Ukraine and Poland in June 2012.