Euro 2012 Group stage

The Euro 2012 kicks off with the group stage which takes place between the 8th and 19th of June 2012. With 24 games to be played this is undoubtedly the busiest betting period of the year. All the bookmakers that will be accepting bets of Euro 2012 will be on their toes and will be offering a wide variety of free bets and special offers. It is expected that the top bookies will be offering over 150 markets for live betting. The teams that participate in the group stage have been qualified through the Euro 2012 qualifying round that started in September 2010 and finished on December 2011 just before the group stage draw.

The qualification stage was formed by 9 groups with either 5 or 6 teams (six groups of 6 teams and 3 groups of 5 teams). The groups were formed after a draw taking into account the ranking of each country in the UEFA European rankings. At the end of the qualifying round, the winner of each group was automatically qualified to the Euro 2012 finals along with the second best team of all groups. The rest 8 remaining teams that finished second in their groups entered the play-offs stage where they would have to play 1 opponent over 2 legs (home and away) and the aggregate winner would qualify to the finals of the tournament.

The groups winners that qualified were: Germany, Russia, Italy, France, Netherlands, Greece, England, Denmark and Spain. The teams that qualified through the play-offs were the Republic of Ireland in the expense of , Sweden, Croatia, Portugal and the Czech Republic. All these teams joined the host countries - Poland and Ukraine - to form the Group Stage. The Group Stage draw took place in Poland in December 2011 and from a impressive event the following groups were decided:
 
Group A:
Poland (hosts)
Greece
Russia
Czech Republic
 
Group B:
Netherlands
Denmark
Portugal
Germany
 
Group C:
Spain
Italy
Republic of Ireland
Croatia
 
Group D:
Ukraine (hosts)
Sweden
France
England
 
Each team in each group will play all other 3 teams once and the top 2 teams will qualify to the next stage of the tournament which is the quarter finals and will take place between the from the 21st to the 25th of June. Go back to the main Euro 2012 betting page and find comprehensive information about betting on the tournament.