Marc Wilmots is coaching Iran. I doubt he'll succeed there. He didn't go very well with Belgium (2016) and Côte d'Ivoire.
AFC announces proposed dates for upcoming Asian Qualifiers "The latest decision has been taken with a view to completing the Preliminary Joint Qualification Round 2 by November 2020 and to commence the subsequent FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Asian Qualifiers Final Round as well as the play-off matches for the AFC Asian Cup China 2023 Round 3 Qualifiers by the March 2021 match dates in the FIFA International Calendar." Matchday 7: October 8 Matchday 8: October 13 Matchday 9: November 12 Matchday 10: November 17
This may cause us some issues but we will see. Not sure how we can host international football matches with the current restrictions our Government has in place and three of those games are home fixtures for us. Maybe something can be worked out.
Neutral venues, perhaps? I wonder if the bigger teams will be willing to do that though. Before all the fixtures got postponed, China's FA arranged two of their matches to be played in Thailand.
Neutral venues is a possibility, although Australian based players may have to serve some sort of quarantine on return. The FFA has a few things to sort out before then.
https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/costa-rica-hero-pinto-assumes-uae-reins is titled "Costa Rica hero Pinto assumes UAE reins."
The remaining matches have been postponed again and will take place next year. Dates are yet to be confirmed.
I remember back in the 80s and 90s, growing up in Oman, watching the AFC qualifiers... the final round of qualifiers for both the 1990 and 1994 world cups were a single game round robin on around 6 teams played in Doha over a couple of weeks. Was actually kind of exciting, I remember UAE qualifying due to Qatar scoring twice against China in injury time and Iraq equalizing in the last minute eliminate Japan and send South Korea through. Anyhoo, my point is, I'm wondering if this is what it eventually comes to if qualifiers keep getting delayed.
Ah yes, the Agony of Doha. Funny thing; I recently spent a couple of years in Japan and whenever I asked them about memorable moments in Japanese football, they always mentioned that last-gasp equalizer by Iraq in '93 that denied them a place at USA 94. They have qualified for 6 World Cups since, but that memory is still raw. I think AFC may consider splitting the 12 teams into 3 groups of 4, instead of persisting with the usual 2 groups of 6. I have a feeling that most of the teams will not be too receptive about playing in centralized venues this time.
Yep - that was actually huge because remeber Japan were bidding to host the WC 2002 back then against South Korea. One of their main criticisms was that despite being a rising Asian power having just won the Asian Cup for the first time in 1992, they'd never qualified for a World Cup before. That goal cost them a place in a first ever world cup at the expense of bidding rivals S.Korea. Many thought it may have cost them hosting rights + the whole project derailed. Qatar scoring 2 late goals to send UAE through against China.... ps, funny I know another country who have never played in a world cup before but will qualify as host and just won their first ever Asian Cup ;-)
It should be best if AFC arranges all matches to be played in one country instead of home & away basis. While in neutral venue, each team should play against the same opponent twice. Also, the final round of Groups should be 3 instead of 2, while each group should have 4 teams. Winner of each group, and 1 Best Runner-Up among the 3 groups to qualify While remaining 2 best runner-ups among 3 groups to play play-off for determining the 5th team who would play further continental play-offs
When I saw what happened in the next six world cup qualifiers, especially for 2014, I have to say that those two stoppage time goals, kostadinov against france and iraqi against japan, were something the most beatiful what can happen in the history of football. Hope to see french and japanese tears again.
AFC just lost a whole year of international fixtures. Will be interesting to see how they modify the 2021 calendar. They are probably regretting their decision to expand the Champions League and AFC Cup now.
So the new dates have been announced. Apparently FIFA asked AFC to complete the fixtures for Round 2 by June 15, 2021. Here's a summary: Round 2 Matchdays 7 & 8: March 2021 Matchdays 9 & 10: June 2021 Final round (8 group toppers + 4 best runner-ups) September 2021 - March 2022 Asian Play-Offs: May 2022 To be played as a one-off match instead of a two-legged tie Intercontinental Play-Offs: June 2022
Logistics of round 2 matches to be completed will be interesting. Currently our borders are generally closed to international travel with quarantine required for any travel which gets approved. The nature of short term stays required may make this difficult to organise. It's possible that our home games may need to take place on neutral territory (at least for the March games).
Qatar to take part in the European qualifiers for 2022. They are placed in group A alongside Portugal, Serbia, Republic of Ireland, Azerbaijan and Luxembourg. A nice set of games for them, but serious questions will be asked if they struggle against the likes of Luxembourg, which I think is likely to happen.
Their general record against European opposition. I seem to recall that they got beaten by Liechtenstein once.
Looked the game up on Google. Seems to have been an off-FIFA matchday friendly from December 2017. I don't follow the Qatar NT closely enough to know if it was their best squad, but there are some familiar names on there so it was probably still a relatively strong squad even if it wasn't the full A team. They do seem to gotten a bit better the last couple of years, though they did still draw India last year, and we couldn't even beat Bangladesh in the next game.
That was back in 2017, they also lost to Curacao a couple of weeks later. That was a low point for the Qatar national team, who've improved in leaps and bounds since then. Looking at the lineups, it looks like there were quite a few of today's players on that team that day (Almoaz, Afif, etc.) but they would have been very young at the time and the current coach would have just been getting started. Qatar may have overachieved a little in 2019 with the Asian Cup win, but they aren't as bad as those 2017 results show - probably somewhere in the middle....
Australia vs. Kuwait, IR Iran vs. Hong Kong, Japan vs. Myanmar, and Cambodia vs. IR Iran were postponed.
If you mean that only 4 of 31 March games will be played, that's a big deal. It's "of 31" instead of "of 32" because one game was moved up to last year. I'm looking at https://www.flashscore.com/football/asia/world-cup/fixtures/ which is unofficial. If Round 2 can't be finished by June, Round 3 could require playing three games in one month like Concacaf will do. Edit: Flash Score didn't update the schedule. I see on Wikipedia that teams will play four games in June. With AFC and Concacaf, June will have many eliminations. AFC should make a statement about if the best team other than Qatar in Qatar's AFC group (currently Oman) is considered to finish first, or if the group is considered not to have a first place team, and the second place team has to be among the best five to advance. Given that not all teams will get to play Qatar twice, and that includes Oman, it makes there be a decision about comparing second place teams. When groups have unequal amounts of teams because some groups don't have a team from the bottom pot (like UEFA has had), it's fair to compare the second place teams against the rest of the top five in their group. However, Qatar is in first, so taking out Qatar and the last place teams of the other groups would help the second place team in Qatar's group. If Qatar is considered not to be in the standings and the top other team is considered to be first, will be the second best other team be eligible for the second place comparison or will the second best other team be considered third? Oman's only loss was to Qatar, and they could win all six games not against Qatar, in which case they would be among the best five second place teams if they weren't considered to be first. Even if the best team other than Qatar and Oman is considered second, Afghanistan has 4 points and is very unlikely to advance. The decisions about if Qatar will be removed from the standings and how second place teams will be compared matter more to other groups than to Qatar's group. What I hope they do not do is give Oman and India forfeit wins over Qatar.