UEFA Euro 2012 in October 2011, the nine group winners qualified automatically, along with the highest ranked second placed team. The remaining eight-second placed teams contested two-legged play-offs, and the four winners qualified for the finals. Twelve of the sixteen finalists participated at the previous tournament in 2008. England and Denmark made their return to the Euro, having last participated in 2004, while Republic of Ireland returned after a twenty-four-year absence to make their second appearance at a European Championship. One of the co-hosts, Ukraine, made their debut as an independent nation (before 1992 Ukraine participated as part of the Soviet Union). With
UEFA Euro 2012 former players who had each been part of European Championship winning teams: Horst Hrubesch, Marco van Basten, Peter Schmeichel and Zinedine Zidane. Teams were drawn consecutively into Group A to D. First, the Pot 1 teams were assigned to the first positions of their groups, while next the positions of all other teams were drawn separately from Pot 4 to 2 (for the purposes of determining the match schedules in each group). The draw resulted in the following groups: Eight cities were selected by UEFA as host venues. In a return to the format used at Euro 1992, Euro 1996