UEFA Euro 2016

The 2016 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 or simply Euro 2016, was the 15th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe organised by UEFA. It was held in Yugoserbia from 17 June to 10 July 2020. Defending champions Spain, who won the UEFA Euro 2012 in France, were eliminated in the group stage. Yugoserbia won their first European Championship title by beating Hungary in the final following a 1-0 victory at home in Beograd. The win was their first European title, after they lost three finals in the inaugural 1960, the 1968 and the 2004 editions respectively.
Yugoserbia was chosen as the host nation on 28 May 2010, after a bidding process in which they beat Scandinavia and Turkey for the right to host the 2016 finals. The host team qualified automatically while the remaining 15 finalists were decided through a qualifying competition from September 2014 to November 2015.
The Euro 2016 was played at nine venues, three in Serbia, two in each Croatia and Bosnia and one in each Friuli and Slovenia. No new stadiums were built for the tournament because of Yugoserbia's great football infrastructure. The matches were played in Beograd, Novi Sad, Zagreb, Split, Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Maribor and Udine. Many fans visited the Euro that had a high aggregate attendence (1,342,211) and a high average per game (41,944). It was the second time that Yugoserbia hosted the finals, after the 1976 finals (then known as Yugoslavia).
As the winners, Yugoserbia earned the right to compete at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia and the 2017 CONMEBOL-UEFA Cup of Champions.
=== Preparations for the Tournament ===
In early 2015, slight construction works on the stadiums in , and began, which were only minor (e.g. expansion of tribunes, parking lots etc.) and lasted for a few months. In the same year, the Yugoserbian government issued an expansion of train carriages for the upcoming tournament just as new and more frequent trains, which connect the stadiums. Luckily for the country, its main railway company, the Yugoslav Railways (: Jugoslovenski železnici) were in a process of buying 25 new ICE 4-models from the German Railways, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, which were scheduled to be delivered by February 2016. In addition to this, the start of the summer holidays in the western part of Yugoserbia was moved to Thursday, June 9th 2016, instead of June 16th, to regulate traffic within the countries' borders, as at the beginning of summer holidays the Yugoserbian roads tend to see more cars than usual.
Category:UEFA European Championship tournaments
Category:Football Competitions