Asia will eliminate 6 teams on Tuesday. Bhutan won 1-0 hosting Guam, and the game at Guam starts at 1:15 A.M. USA Eastern, which means it will end at about 3:15 A.M. USA Eastern, 12:15 A.M. USA Pacific, and 8:15 A.M. in England. The last of the games that day is Pakistan vs. Cambodia, which starts at 12:00 P.M. USA Eastern. Four of the six first legs were 1-0 or 2-0 home wins, Bangladesh won 1-0 at Laos, and Malaysia won 7-1 hosting Timor-Leste. The most goals Malaysia scored in qualifying for one World Cup was 16 for 1994, and their next most is 8.
It didn't take long to have a problem off the field. After winning 1-0 at home, Wikipedia says Macau did not go to Sri Lanka due to safety reasons. There are no unused matchdays before Round 2 starts on 5 September, so either Macau will be disqualified or the game will be played on a day that isn't a FIFA matchday. Wikipedia says the draw will be on July 17, which is in 38 days. I had previously seen that it will be in July without the date.
211. Bhutan Bhutan It is the first country eliminated from Qatar 2022 after losing 5-0 against Guam in the second leg. (Aggregate 5-1)
210. Brunei Darussalam 2-1 Mongolia (aggregate 2-3, Brunei Darussalam eliminated) 209. Timor-Leste 1-5 Malaysia (aggregate 2-12, Timor-Leste eliminated, Malaysia hosted both legs) 208. Bangladesh 0-0 Laos (1-0 aggregate, Laos eliminated) 207. Pakistan 1-2 Cambodia (1-4 aggregate, Pakistan eliminated)
https://www.scmp.com/sport/football...lifier-farce-continues-39-goal-fa-cup-protest Macau World Cup qualifier protest continues with 39-goal FA Cup farce as goalkeepers allow opponents to score J
That exceeds Australia's 31-0 win over American Samoa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_Adema_149–0_SO_l'Emyrne is about a 149-0 game in Madagascar in 2002. I wonder how long the average restart after a goal is if players don't celebrate.
206. Macau https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/fifa-disciplinary-committee-sanctions-macau-football-association
From that article: "Further details on the draw are available here." Um...where, FIFA? I didn't find any link
Well at least we know the AFC draw will be in Kuala Lumpur on 17 July 2019. It seems that each confederation will make its own draw on the same day at its headquarters. Differentiating from the draw for the qualifiers to Russia 2018 World Cup , which was a draw for all the confederations.
I wonder if it's the first time a team played at least one qualifier and was eliminated while winning every game they played. A forfeit score is 3-0, and I wonder what FIFA would have done if Macau won the first leg 4-0 and would have advanced with a 3-0 loss.
With UEFA the ruling is clear. Article 28 - REFUSAL TO PLAY AND SIMILAR CASES • 28.01 : If a club refuses to play or is responsible for a match not taking place or not being played in full, the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body declares the match forfeited and disqualifies the club concerned in combination with the following fines... https://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFile.../02/60/37/12/2603712_DOWNLOAD.pdf#ID2057_1053 But in FIFA's regulations for the 2022 World Cup Preliminary Rounds I couldn't find such language specific to the type of example you've provided. I suppose Article 5.3 is the closest one can interpret as justified language for a team being expelled from a tournament in your example. Article 5 - WITHDRAWAL, UNPLAYED MATCHES AND ABANDONED MATCHES • 5.1 : All participating member associations undertake to play all of their matches until eliminated from the preliminary competition. • 5.2 : Any association that withdraws between the submission of the entry form and the start of the preliminary competition will be sanctioned with a fine of at least CHF 20,000. Any association that withdraws after the start of the preliminary competition will be sanctioned with a fine of at least CHF 40,000. • 5.3 : Depending on the circumstances of the withdrawal, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee may impose sanctions in addition to those provided for in par. 2 above, including the expulsion of the association concerned from subsequent FIFA competitions. • 5.4 : Any match which is not played or which is abandoned – except in cases of force majeure recognised by FIFA – may lead to the imposition of sanctions against the relevant associations by the FIFA Disciplinary Committee in accordance with the FIFA Disciplinary Code. In such cases, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee may also order that the match be replayed. • 5.5 : Any association that withdraws or whose behaviour is liable for a match not being played or being abandoned may be ordered by FIFA to reimburse FIFA, the host association or any other participating member association for any expenses incurred as a result of its behaviour. In such cases, the association concerned may also be ordered by FIFA to pay compensation for any damages incurred by FIFA, the host association or any other participating member association. The association in question will also forfeit any claim to financial remuneration from FIFA Articles 5.6 and 5.7 deal with unplayed and abandoned matches caused by unforeseeable circumstances ("force majeure"). Page 9 of the link: https://resources.fifa.com/image/up...-competition.pdf?cloudid=r6gcejmanhw27gzaa9xb
Damn, Pakistan. You have 200 million people (plus probably over ten million more living in other countries).
unclesox, thank you for the links. To anyone who complains that USA should be better because of their high population, of the 16 most populous countries according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations) only 6 are in the top 48 of the FIFA Rankings. The 10 of those countries not in the top 48 of the FIFA Rankings have 51.3 percent of the world's population.
The reason being is although we have a high population, we also have other sports that our best athletes play instead of soccer.
Well, every country has other sports. New Zealand is the most impressive IMO. Lots of different sports and among the world's best in some of them. Still decent in soccer. Tiny population But this is O/T...
Of course but for the majority of the countries, soccer is the most popular. That's not the case here. Population and GDP is very much correlated with higher rankings in soccer. It's been that way for a long time . That's not to say you can't find outliers or there isn't a small population country that can't be good at soccer but just that there's a positive correlation.
Pakistan, where do I even begin? Their football federation is now under a normalization committee and FIFA have brought an end to the warring factions. Corruption has always been rampant, and management of the PFF is seen as a lucrative position due to the large amounts of foreign currency that often goes in there from FIFA and AFC. Unlike India, their dual nationality laws are a lot more relaxed, but the PFF have always been reluctant to include players from their diaspora communities, perhaps because they are more likely to speak out against the blatant corruption. Popularity of football remains really high in certain regions of the country, and also among the working class communities in the big metropolitan areas, but the level of organization of the domestic competitions is really shoddy. It is common to see fans standing on the touchline as it is easy to get on the pitch due to a lack of advertisement hoardings and lax security, even during their top-tier matches. Another reason is that many of the teams are still government-owned, like the old Soviet teams of the past. The champions of their Premier League is called Khan Research Laboratories, and some of their notable teams are Pakistan Airforce, K-Electric, National Bank and Pakistan Airlines. There is no representation of the communities and it is impossible for, say your average person from Lahore, to affiliate with any of these teams. Japan had a similar problem in the past, and they decided to get rid of these clubs that represented companies, and create ones that fostered regional identities instead. If they want immediate short-term success, they can do what the Philippines and Afghanistan have done and start by inviting more players to play for them from their diaspora communities, then slowly increase investment in their domestic competitions. A huge overhaul of their infrastructure is needed in this regard.
It's actually more than that at 29 teams, which is 82.9 percent. 206 through 187 is 20 teams. The first eliminations in Concacaf will be in October 2020. Given that only the group winners advance, some teams will be eliminated after 4 of 6 matchdays. Even if some groups are close and have every team alive at that point, some teams will be eliminated by then. CAF announced their format today. They went back to their format for 2014 with two leg series to get down to 40 teams for 10 groups of 4 and group winners playing each other to determine the 5 qualifiers. With 54 teams, 26 will get byes and 28 will play in Round 1. A site says they have not announced the date of their draw but that it will be this month. I don't know if they will draw the groups then or just the Round 1 pairs. If they only draw Round 1, they can draw Round 2 after they know all the teams. If they draw Rounds 1 and 2 together, it will be like what UEFA has in Champions League qualifying rounds where the seeded clubs are determined by the better club in each pair in the previous round, and unseeded clubs who advance borrow the coefficients of clubs they beat to get seeded in the next round. The 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualification draw will be on Thursday. Hopefully they will announce the dates for those games, which helps figure out what dates will have WCQs. AFC will have their Round 2 draw on Wednesday, and those groups begin on 5 September. Wikipedia says OFC will start this year but does not give the format or dates. The 2020 OFC Nations Cup will be held in May and June. If they keep the format of having 4 teams play in a group at one site that advancing 1 team to join 7 teams with byes, I'm assuming that group will be played this year, in which case 3 teams will be eliminated this year. I don't think OFC would wait until March to determine what teams play in May.