UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship
The UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship or simply UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship, is a competition in women's football for European national teams of players under 19 years of age. National under-19 teams whose countries belong to the European governing body UEFA can register to enter the competition. In odd years the tournament is also a FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup qualifying competition. The tournament began in the 1997–98 season as an under-18 event and became an under-19s event from the 2001–02 season, it is held yearly. The Championship has 3 phases : the qualifying phase open to all eligible nations, the elite phase featuring the group winners and runners-up from the qualifying phase, and the finals phase which is composed of 8 qualifying teams. The finals themselves are composed of two groups of four teams; each team plays the others in the group. The winner of each group after the 3 matches plays the runner-up of the opposing group in a semi-final, with the winner contesting the final. Finals format. Since 2002 the finals had eight teams with two groups of four teams, semi-finals and the final. Comprehensive  team results by tournament (since 2002). For each tournament, the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown. Since 2002, the 3rd/4th-place match has not been played. Tournament statistics. Golden Player by tournament. The official website UEFA.com selected a Golden Player Award for certain tournaments.