With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic wiping out the vast majority of this year’s major sporting events, UEFA EURO 2020 is one of the biggest events in the sporting calendar to fall victim to the outbreak.

After UEFA announced that the tournament was to be postponed until 2021, and with how well-received our recent article on classic football shirts was, we decided to host our own European Championships’… of kits!

The tournament, which took place via UCFB’s Twitter account, involved followers interacting with polls to vote for their favourite kit to determine a match’s result.

There was a catch, though. We were only permitted to contest pre-confirmed kits for the tournament, or a team’s latest release, which meant no ‘leaked’ shirts were allowed to be used during the competition.

Aside from that, the tournament format was completely identical to the main event, with 16 play-off teams competing for four places at the finals, ahead of a 24-team main competition.

Three home nation sides were represented in the tournament, though only Wales and Northern Ireland managed to reach the semi-finals. Meanwhile, both Scotland and the Republic of Ireland failed to qualify for the finals after Slovakia’s slick Nike home shirt was chosen to progress ahead of the Irish, and Israel overcame the Tartan Army.

England faced-off with Iceland in the quarter-finals, looking to avenge their humiliation at Euro 2016, though history would repeat itself as Iceland earned a shock win.

Unfortunately for Northern Ireland, they couldn’t reach the final after UCFB’s Twitter followers deemed the Netherlands’ latest home shirt was a more deserving entry. They would, however, pip France in the third-place play-off.

Competing against the Netherlands for the chance to be crowned UCFB Euro 2020 of Kits champion was Wales, and after receiving a staggering 66.8% of votes, the Welsh comfortably clinched the title.

Here are the teams who took part in UCFB’s Euro 2020 of Kits:

Play-off stages

Iceland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Slovakia, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Israel, Norway, Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, North Macedonia, Kosovo.

Path winners: Iceland, Northern Ireland, Norway, Kosovo.

Final tournament

Wales, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Kosovo, Austria, Ukraine, England, Croatia, Norway, Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, France, Germany.

Winners: Wales