World Cup 2022: Asian football sets schedule for delayed qualifiers
- Remaining World Cup 2022 qualifiers scheduled after long break due to Covid-19
No qualifiers have been played yet this year because of the coronavirus outbreak. The AFC said the remaining games will be played in March and June on dates protected by Fifa for national teams to call up players from their clubs.
A subsequent group stage – of two six-team groups – is scheduled from September 2021 to March 2022. That will use new slots created by Fifa from January 24 to February 1, 2022, to help national teams outside Europe clear their backlog of games.
Four Asian teams will qualify directly from those groups to the final tournament in Qatar. Two more will advance to an elimination game that will decide Asia’s entry in the intercontinental play-off round.
Fifa previously extended the World Cup qualifying programme into the May-June 2022 international dates to make space for the intercontinental play-offs. One team enters from each of Asia, the North American region, Oceania and South America to decide the last two places in the 32-team World Cup line-up.