UEFA announce increase in prize money for Euro 2016

But there will be one notable absentee from the draw after UEFA president Michel Platini lost an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against a 90-day ban from all footballing activities on Friday.

Karim Benzema, a striker who plays for Real Madrid, was suspended indefinitely by the French soccer federation after being charged with conspiracy to blackmail relating to an extortion scam over a sex tape involving teammate Mathieu Valbuena.

Three teams have held the UEFA European Championship and FIFA World Cup titles at the same time: West Germany (EURO 1972, World Cup 1974), France (World Cup 1998, EURO 2000) and Spain (EURO 2008, World Cup 2010). It means just eight teams will be eliminated, with the top two teams going through plus four sides that finished third with the best points tally.

The hardest group is Group E (Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Sweden).

Italy are in Pot 2, so will be paired with one of the seeded teams.

The draw for the group stages of Euro 2016 will take place this Saturday, with the home nations set to find out who will they meet in the first round of the tournament in France. Russian Federation has the second-highest UEFA coefficient in Pot 2. The defending world champions and early favorites drew three tricky teams in an underrated Ukraine team, a Polish side anchored by Robert Lewandowski – whose 13 goals led qualifying and might well make him the best striker in the game at the moment – and a plucky Northern Ireland.

Pot 4: Turkey, Republic of Ireland, Iceland, Wales, Albania, Northern Ireland. Croatia has the individual brilliance of Ivan Rakitic and Luka Modric, two stars who will know the Spanish players very well, but there are doubts over the tactical acumen of coach Ante Cacic. Although Switzerland, Romania and Albania all qualified directly, none of them won their groups.

“If we analyse our games from the qualifiers we can say that we have a good defence but at the same time we did not score so many goals…this can be a problem for us”.

Iceland, like Albania playing in their first major tournament finals, face Portugal, Austria and Hungary in Group F.