Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Poland, Albania, Hungary, Georgia, Latvia, Moldova and Norway booked places in next year’s home-and-away UEFA Futsal EURO 2022 qualifying group stage after topping their qualifying round groups.
The road to UEFA Futsal EURO 2022, which has a new format and an expanded 16-team final tournament in the Netherlands, began with the qualifying round running over the last four days.
Hoping to join the nine group winners are 14 other sides who have reached April’s qualifying play-offs: runners-up Cyprus, Armenia, Greece, San Marino, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark, Israel and North Macedonia plus the five best third-placed teams – Bulgaria, England, Turkey, Switzerland and Montenegro (who pipped Wales due to their superior coefficient after both were equal on all other criteria including disciplinary record). The play-off draw is on 13 February.
The Netherlands will host UEFA Futsal EURO 2022 in Amsterdam and Groningen after being selected at today’s UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Ljubljana.
The Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) will welcome its first major tournament in the sport since staging the inaugural FIFA Futsal World Cup in 1989, though it has been the venue for many major UEFA national-team and club events. The 2022 finals, to be played from 19 January to 6 February that year, will be the first Futsal EURO since the switch from the biennial 12-team tournament to a 16-nation finals held every four years.
Matches will be played at the Amsterdam Arena, which seats 12,000, and Groningen Arena. The hosts’ 15 finals opponents will be decided by qualifying running from 29 January 2020 to October 2021.
The Netherlands will follow in the footsteps of previous Futsal EURO hosts Slovenia (2018), Serbia (2016), Belgium (2014), Croatia (2012), Hungary (2010), Portugal (2007), the Czech Republic (2005), Italy (2003), Russia (2001) and Spain (the first UEFA European Futsal Championship of 1999 and also the 1996 UEFA European Futsal Tournament).
