Group 5 of the 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying competition consisted of six teams: Serbia, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Estonia. The composition of the nine groups in the qualifying group stage was decided by the draw held on 11 December 2018, 09:00 CET (UTC+1), at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland,[1] with the teams seeded according to their coefficient ranking.
The group was originally scheduled to be played in home-and-away round-robin format between 5 September 2019 and 13 October 2020. Under the original format, the group winners and the best runners-up among all nine groups (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) would qualify directly for the final tournament, while the remaining eight runners-up would advance to the play-offs.[2]
On 17 March 2020, all matches were put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[3] On 17 June 2020, UEFA announced that the qualifying group stage would be extended and end on 17 November 2020, while the play-offs, originally scheduled to be played in November 2020, would be cancelled. Instead, the group winners and the five best runners-up among all nine groups (not counting results against the sixth-placed team) would qualify for the final tournament.[4] [5] [6]
Times are CET/CEST, as listed by UEFA (local times, if different, are in parentheses).
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