The road to the 2022 World Cup has begun with the first round of matches playing their second legs tonight. They also double as the Asian Cup qualifiers as well.
Yeah they apparently released a statement signed by most of the senior team, the U23s and U18s saying that they will “no longer be available to represent Macau” if the game didn’t go ahead
Interesting for those who haven’t seen, there’s a real A-League connection with the Guam team. They are coached by Karl Dodd and I was surprised to see that their assistant coach is Daniel McBreen.
Kudos to them for really toughing it out with obscure jobs.
Terrific result by India getting a draw in Qatar. Looked like most fans in the stands were Indian.
But why the hell are Qatar in the qualifiers? Do they double as qualification for the Asian Cup?
Yup. Qatar needs to finish top two in their group to reach the next stage of qualifying for 2023. They are already qualified for the World Cup as hosts, so if they finish in a position which would result in progress to the next round of WCQ (i.e. group winner or top 4 runners-up) then their spot in that stage would instead be taken by the 5th-best runner-up.
I see China’s new approach to naturalising long-term players in China has already paid off with Elkeson scoring two. He’s going to do some serious damage to some of these AFC defences.
Kuala Lumpur: The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has today confirmed the withdrawal of the DPR Korea Football Association from the Asian Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asian Cup China 2023.
Following the recent withdrawal of Korea DPR from the preliminary competition for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, the Bureau for the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers has taken a decision in order to ensure the fairness of the competition for the remaining teams.
In accordance with this decision, the results of all of the Round 2 matches already played by Korea DPR are declared null and void. Consequently, after the conclusion of all groups’ Round 2 matches, the results of the matches between the second-placed teams and the fifth-placed teams in groups A to G will not be counted in order to have a balanced final comparison between all group runners-up and therefore, alleviating any possible imbalance between the seven qualifying groups caused by the sudden reduction of Group H to only four teams.