UEFA to determine EURO 2004™ fixture lists

The fixture draw for four EURO 2004™ qualification groups will take place at UEFA headquarters in Nyon on Thursday 28 March.

Deadline passed
Monday 25 March was the deadline for participants to inform UEFA about fixture lists for the ten qualifying groups. During the 60 days since the draw for the qualifying round was held in Porto, the national associations of the fifty countries on the starting grid for the European Football Championship have been holding meetings with a view to agreeing the order of matches on the ten dates in 2002 and 2003 earmarked for qualifying games.

Groups concerned
Failure to agree on the fixture lists means that UEFA determine the order of matches by means of a draw. Six groups have finalised their fixture lists by mutual agreement. But representatives of the other four groups have confirmed to UEFA that no agreement has been reached. The groups concerned are:

Group 2 involving Bosnia-Herzegovina, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Romania.
Group 3 involving Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Moldova and the Netherlands.
Group 6 involving Armenia, Greece, Northern Ireland, Spain and Ukraine.
Group 7 involving England, Liechtenstein, FYR Macedonia, Slovakia and Turkey.

Lagrell to supervise draw
The draw will be held at 12.00CET on Thursday and will be conducted by Lars-Åke Lagrell, chairman of UEFA's National Teams Committee. The procedure will be simple. Each national association will be assigned a letter: either A, B, C, D or E. The fixture list for the group will then be established as follows: