Cymru U21 will discover their opponents for their 2025 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying campaign when the draw takes place at UEFA HQ in Nyon on February 2.
The campaign will be Matty Jones’ first in charge of the side following the former Cymru midfielder’s appointment as head coach last September.
Cymru finished fourth in their last qualifying group and missed out on qualification for the 2023 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, but it will be a new-look squad aiming to take Cymru to their first finals this time around.
Jones used October’s friendly against Austria – his first match as head coach – as an opportunity to introduce a number of his squad to this level of football, handing 12 players players their debuts for the under-21s.
Defender Ed Turns was named as the new captain of the side for the upcoming campaign, while Jones selected Fin Stevens as his vice-captain.
Cymru have been placed in Pot 4 and will be joined by 52 UEFA member associations in the draw, which gets under way at 8AM GMT on Thursday.
The teams will be drawn into 7 groups of 6 teams and 2 groups of 5 teams, with the qualifiers taking place between September 2023 and October 2024.
“We’re all looking forward to the draw and I think ‘excited’ is an understatement. The staff, players and everyone involved with this age group is eager to find out what the journey entails for us for the next 18 months to two years, so we’re all looking forward to competitive football again. It will be a new experience for me with the draw itself and then obviously we’ll have the negotiations that come after in terms of deciding where the fixtures will be and when they’ll get played. We want to get the best outcomes for us, so I’m hoping that all goes smoothly.”
Matty Jones, Cymru U21 Head Coach
The Road to 2025 Under-21 Euro
The Slovak Football Association has been appointed to host the 16-team final tournament of the 2025 UEFA European Under-21 Championship. The 2025 finals will be the third since the expansion to 16 teams, following the 2021 editions in Hungary and Slovenia and this year’s tournament in Georgia and Romania.
Hosts Slovakia will be joined in the finals in summer 2025 by 15 teams emerging from qualifying. In the final tournament, teams will play in four groups of four with the top two from each progressing to the knockout phase.
The matches will be played in eight venues in eight different cities across the country in the summer of 2025.
