The World Cup 2022 ⚽ is coming! Let’s review the Qualifiers (Part I)

FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Qualifiers will be back in action this week. This competition will take place from March 24th until April 2nd, and one important thing is that Friendly Mode will be turned on in TrophyRoom during this time. With only 50 challenges allowed, our players will need to pay attention to small details to get the best squad and become top players. Therefore, I’ll tell you all about these World Cup qualifiers matches in the next few days, let’s start with the fixtures, key matches, etc.

Overview

Six continental confederations will organise their own qualifying competitions. All 211 members of FIFA are eligible to enter qualification, the host member Qatar qualified automatically for the tournament. However, Qatar’s obliged to participate in the Asian qualifying stage as the first two rounds also act as the qualification for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup. The allocation of slots for each confederation is the same as the 2018 tournament:

CAF (Africa): 5
AFC (Asia): 4.5 (not including host nation)
UEFA (Europe): 13
CONCACAF (North and Central America and Carribean): 3.5
OFC (Oceania): 0.5CONMEBOL (South America): 4.5

On 9 December 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency handed Russia a four-year ban from all major sporting events. However, they could still enter World Cup qualification as the ban only applies to the final tournament in Qatar.

This month, CONMEBOL (South America) has decided to suspend a doubleheader of World Cup Qualifiers amid concern over the Covid-19 pandemic and quarantine restrictions. Besides, OCF (Oceania), AFC (Asia) and CAF (Africa) won’t take part in this month as their matches aren’t included in their fixtures.

Norjmoogiin Tsedenbal scored the first goal of the qualifying in the Mongolia’s 2-0 win against Brunei on 6 June 2019

Fixtures

Let’s start with CONCACAF, the qualification process is currently in the first round: teams ranked from 6-35 based on FIFA rankings of July 2020 were drawn into six groups of five and will play single round-robin matches with group winners qualifying for the second round. I won’t go deep into CONCACAF’s qualification matches as their matches won’t be included in TrophyRoom.

Moving to UEFA, the qualification process is also in the first round: 10 groups of 5 or 6 teams with group winners qualifying for the World Cups finals. In the second round also the last, the 10 group runners-up would be joined by the best 2 Nations League group winners that finished outside the top two of their qualifying group. These 12 teams will be drawn into three play-off paths, playing semi-finals and finals, with the 3 paths winners qualifying for the World Cup. Qatar will join in UEFA’s qualifying as they want to prepare carefully for the World Cup 2022.

Let’s take a look at the groups and fixtures of the FIFA Worldcup European qualifying!!!