Route to Regions' Cup finals paved by draw

All 38 entrant associations for the 2014/15 UEFA Regions' Cup have discovered their potential route to the final tournament after the preliminary and intermediate round draws were made by UEFA Youth and Amateur Football Committee chairman Jim Boyce and James Cully, who received the 2012/13 Fair Play trophy as Eastern Region of Northern Ireland captain.

Now in its ninth edition, the UEFA Regions' Cup is for players who have never featured at any professional level, and is contested by the amateur regional champions from the competing associations – or by a national selection in the case of smaller associations. Veneto won the most recent edition on home soil in Italy in June and the exact representatives for each country in the coming competition will be confirmed next spring, with only Malta and San Marino fielding amateur national teams.

The eight lowest-ranked nations according to the UEFA Regions' Cup coefficients will begin in the preliminary round. The representatives of Wales, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Sweden are in one section from 23 to 27 July, and the other will involve teams from Slovenia, Greece, San Marino and Scotland from 15 to 19 June.

Both preliminary group winners will join the remaining 30 contenders in the intermediate round, for which eight groups have been formed, to be concluded by 15 December 2014. The Italian representatives, hoping to emulate Veneto's triumph, will face teams from Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Belarus

The eight intermediate round section winners will qualify for the final tournament, provisionally scheduled for the last two weeks of June 2015. The hosts will be decided by the end of December 2014 from among those qualifying associations that indicate an interest.

"The Regions Cup is something which is very close to my heart, it's something which, I think, UEFA deserves tremendous credit for," Boyce said. "We have a competition for lads who play football for fun – and remember that there are a lot more people who play football for fun than do so to earn a living.

"UEFA have given people throughout Europe the opportunity of making new friends and playing in a major European competition, [something] which probably they would never ever have dreamt about. I would like to say how pleased I am to see so many people here today. This is without doubt the biggest attendance that we've ever had for a Regions' Cup draw."

Preliminary round draw
Group A (23-27 July): Wales, Estonia*, Kazakhstan, Sweden

Group B (15-19 June): Slovenia*, Greece, San Marino, Scotland

Intermediate round draw
Group 1 (20-24 October): Azerbaijan, Croatia*, Latvia, Winner preliminary round Group A

Group 2 (dates/hosts tbc): Germany, Slovakia, England, Winner preliminary round Group B

Group 3 (25-29 September): Serbia*, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Czech Republic

Group 4 (20-24 October): Republic of Ireland, Hungary*, Lithuania, Israel

Group 5 (23-27 September): Ukraine, Spain, Northern Ireland, Moldova*

Group 6 (1-5 October): Turkey, Russia, Malta*, Finland

Group 7 (25-29 September): Italy, Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina*, Belarus

Group 8 (13-17 October): Romania, Poland*, France, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

*Hosts