If you’re even the slightest bit confused about the upcoming Euro 2016 draw, we’ve got you covered.
The whens, wheres, whos, hows and whats should all become clear below.
The draw takes place this Saturday (12/12) at 5 PM Irish time live from Paris and you can watch it on either RTÉ or on uefa.com‘s live stream.
The ceremony will be an hour long and will be presented by former European Championship winners Bixente Lizarazu (France) and Ruud Gullit (Netherlands).
David Trezeguet (France), Oliver Bierhoff (Germany), Angelos Charisteas (Greece) and Antonín Panenka (Czech Republic) will be the former Euro winners making the draws from four pots, decided upon by each country’s Uefa co-efficient.
Yes! Antonín Panenka will be there.
Ireland have been drawn in Pot 4 and the draw for that is scheduled to begin at 5.32 PM (precise, eh?)
Pot 1: France, Spain, Germany, England, Portugal, Belgium.
Pot 2: Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Ukraine.
Pot 3: Czech Republic, Sweden, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary.
Pot 4: Turkey, Republic of Ireland, Iceland, Wales, Albania, Northern Ireland.
Each team will be placed in one of six groups (A to F) with four teams per group.
The draw will begin with Pot 1 from which one ball will be drawn and placed in Group B as B1, the next ball placed in Group C as C1 and so on (France, as hosts, have already been allocated as A1).
Next comes Pot 4 (Ireland’s) where the same procedure takes place with balls being allocated to each group one by one. Pot 3 then gets drawn and, finally, comes Pot 2.
The tournament gets underway on June 10, 2016 and the top two teams from each group automatically qualify for the knockout phase.
The four best third-placed sides also advance to the knockout stages, leaving 16 teams.
The Euro 2016 final, which Ireland will definitely be in, takes place at the Stade de France on Sunday, July 10.
