Preview M20 2012 Qualification Draw

The Men’s 20 European Handball Championship is an event for players born 1992 or younger. It will be carried out in Turkey between 5 and 15 July 2012 with the playing venues being Ankara Arena and THF Handball Complex, both in the capitol Ankara.

Sixteen teams will battle for the title, and three nations already qualified: hosts Turkey, Croatia – winners of the 2010 M18 European Championship – and Spain – runners-up of the 2010 M18 European Championship.

The remaining thirteen teams will qualify for the final tournament through qualification that will be carried out between 6 and 8 April 2012.

The qualification will be drawn on 18 November 2011 at approximately 10:30 hrs (local time) in the Eventpyramide Vösendorf, south of Vienna (AUT) on the occasion of the Conference for Secretaries General, at the 20th anniversary of the European Handball Federation.

Draw Modus

29 national teams will take part in the qualification. They will be drawn into eight groups – five groups of four teams and three groups of three teams.

13 teams will qualify for the final tournament: in the groups 1 to 5 the top two teams will qualify, in the groups 6 to 8 only the group winner will qualify.

Seedings and pots

The seeding of the national teams is based on the ranking of the 2010 Men’s 18 ECh in Montenegro.

Pot 1

Denmark (automatically placed in Group 1, row 1)
Germany (automatically placed in Group 2, row 1)
France (automatically placed in Group 3, row 1)*
Serbia (automatically placed in Group 4, row 1)
Switzerland (automatically placed in Group 5, row 1)

* seeding based on the ranking at the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games (3rd place)

Pot 2

The teams of Pot 2 will be drawn to row 1, groups 6-10, row 2, groups 15.

Sweden
Slovenia
Russia
Poland
Czech Republic
Iceland
Norway
Portugal

Pot 3

The teams of Pot 3 will be drawn to row 2, groups 6-8, row 3, groups 1-8 and row 4, groups 1-5.

Austria
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Belarus
Bulgaria
Estonia
Finland
Hungary
Israel
Latvia
FYR Macedonia
Montenegro
Netherlands
Romania
Slovakia
Ukraine

Draw Procedure

• In step one, the five teams of Pot 1 are placed to row 1, groups 1-5.
• In step two, the teams of pot 2 are drawn to row 1, groups 6-8 and row 2, groups 1-5.
• In step three, the teams of pot 3 are drawn to row 2, groups 6-8, row 3, groups 1-8 and row 4, groups 1-5.
• In step four, a separate draw will determine theright to organise the qualification tournament.

Teams which were already awarded with the right to organise the 2010 Men’s 20 ECh qualification groups do not have the right to be the organiser of a 2012 Men’s 20 ECh qualification group.

This applies to the Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia and the Ukraine.