I thought that only Comnebol and the CAF would have started their qualifying games before the December 5 preliminary draw in Frankfurt. This Friday the AFC made the draw of preliminary matchups that will decide who will join the top 25 Asian teams for the 12/5 WCQ draw in Frankfurt: Bangladesh vs Tajikistan Turkmenistan vs Afghanistan Chinese Taipei vs Macao Pakistan vs Kyrgyzstan Laos vs Sri Lanka Mongolia vs Maldives Republic Guam vs Nepal The match dates are yet to be decided. It's not clear if they will be played in home/away legs or just one match. Does anyone know? And who are the other top 25 AFC teams already seeded for the ultimate draw?
According to FIFA, they will be home and away playoffs. 4 teams didn't register for the tournament (Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, and the Philippines) and Myanmar can't play cause of their withdraw during the 2002 WCQ's. The other 25 teams were the top ranked Asian sides on the FIFA World Rankings as of October 22nd. All pre-preliminary matches must be finished by November 29th, 2003. The 7 winners will advance to the next round where they will meet the 25 other nations to form a 32-team round. My guess is that they will break it up like the Finals: 8 groups of 4 with the winners advancing. After that they could break it down into 2 groups of 4 with the top 2 in each group qualifying for the Finals and the two 3rd place teams playing for the right to play the CONCACAF 4th placer. If this is the case, it's wrong because the final round will be too easy as at least half of the teams would be qualifying. In the 32 team round they may also take the 8 winners and 2 best runners up teams so that it's 2 groups of 5. This is where I wish they would take the top two from OFC and place them into this Final Round. This is all speculation, if anyone can figure out anything else just post it. Also, I am running a 2006 WCQ Prediction Contest in the FIFA and Tournaments board. So I'll be posting the Asian matches very soon and if you want any details just ask me! Hope this helps.
Does anyone know why Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia and the Phillippines won't be participating? For Bhutan, I can guess it's financial, and Cambodia, maybe because of the state of the nation as a whole, but why Brunei and Phillipines?
Philippines Well the Philippines hardly plays any football and their more popular sport is basketball. It could be funding problems there as well.
Dates? Does anybody know when FIFA is going to release the dates and times of the pre-preliminary matches? The only one I was able to dig up was the Pakistan-Kyrgyzstan first leg which will be played on November 21st. I know they all have to be played by November 29th (that's first and second legs) so I would imagine that they will be played very soon. Frankly, these dates and times should have been available for some time now and yet they still aren't. It's sad and unexcusable that matches in Asia, Oceania, and Africa take so long to finalize and release dates and times. No wonder most people outside of these places could care less about their matches (however I still care).
It's November 7th now... Does anyone have an links or info on the pre-preliminary matches in 2006 WC qualifying in Asia? Like dates? times? etc.
This stage of qualifying can never really attract the interest of most people (for obvious reasons), which is why there is so little info about it. I couldnt even find anything on AFC's website...
This are the dates of the matches: 19-Nov Turkmenistan v Afghanistan 21-Nov Guam v Nepal 21-Nov Laos v Sri Lanka 21-Nov Mongolia v Maldives Republic 21-Nov Pakistan v Kyrzgystan 22-Nov Afghanistan v Turkmenistan 23-Nov Chinese Taipei v Macao 28-Nov Kyrzgystan v Pakistan 28-Nov Bangladesh v Tajikstan 28-Nov Maldives Republic v Mongolia 28-Nov Nepal v Guam 28-Nov Sri Lanka v Laos 29-Nov Macao v Chinese Taipei 02-Dec Tajikistan v Bangladesh
I don't know about Hamatachi.... but I was shocked to see you here again. We actually talked about you recently.
We talked about people who left.... I cannot talk about the reason I posted anymore. It was good stuff about you.
Still no time of the game right now - Although it's about 8:00 over there. Nothing anywhere. Although in searching for the score, I did find out that Nepal withdrew, letting Guam advance to try and break Maldives or is it American Samoa's record for getting crunched.
"ASHGABAT, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Afghanistan slumped to an 11-0 defeat away to neighbours Turkmenistan as they made their World Cup debut in an Asian zone preliminary qualifier on Wednesday. About 500 Afghan fans, mostly local residents, were among the crowd of 10,000 in the capital of Turkmenistan, a secretive ex-Soviet state, but they had little to cheer in the first leg." http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=reu-worldturkmenistan&prov=reuters&type=lgns
Maldives is trying to move the first leg of their match away from Mongolia because of the freezing temperatures. Apparently the match is still scheduled to be played at Ulan-Baatar. http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=2481 If the match goes ahead, I believe it will be the first FIFA match Mongolia has hosted.
i wanna see how good kuwait plays now. they always give any asian teams touch shot but when they play outside afc they get something like german 8 or 10 -kuwait and on wednsday portugal 8-0 kuwait
Bangladesh WCQ against Tajikstan "A double strike by ace forward Alfaz Ahmed yesterday gave the national team a hard-fought 2-1 win over the Bangladesh under-20s in the lone practice match ahead of their World Cup first-leg qualifier against Tajikistan at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium." http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/23/d31123040235.htm Bangladesh is already worried about the cold weather that they will face in the return leg at Tajikstan. A few more Bangladesh articles http://www.matamat.com/fullstory.php?gd=26&cd=2003-11-22 http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/22/d31122040131.htm
2nd leg Afghanistan 0 Turkmenistan 2 Begench Kuliyev 85, 90 att: 2500 "KABUL, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Afghanistan took another step out of the sporting wilderness on Sunday, hosting its first competitive soccer international in at least 25 years at a stadium where the Taliban once carried out public executions." http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=reu-afghanistan&prov=reuters&type=lgns pictures http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/photo?slug=xar10511231402.afghanistan_soccer_return_xar105&prov=ap http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/photo?slug=xar10411231407.afghanistan_soccer_return_xar104&prov=ap http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/photo?slug=xar10311231409.afghanistan_soccer_return_xar103&prov=ap