World Cup Qualifying Update: Asia
We’re down to the final ten Asian teams, and we’re left with the usual suspects, a few surprises, and…Australia? Yes, Australia, competing with the big boys again after blowing away the Oceania competition a little too often.
Euros are now over, and it’s time to start turning our focus toward World Cup 2010. We’ve already talked about the qualifying rules and current status for CONCACAF and CONMEBOL. Now it’s time to look at Asia.
World Cup Qualifying Nuts and Bolts
What the heck is Australia doing here?
Australia may not be physically in Asia, but everybody in the Oceania region, including the Australians themselves, was tired of seeing the Aussies continually blowing away the much weaker Oceania competition. Sure, it’s occasionally fun to win 31-0, as the Socceroos once did against Samoa. But it gets old after awhile, and you start wishing for more of a challenge.
And so Australia made the leap to the AFC in summer of 2005.
How many countries are in the AFC?
With Australia, there are 46. Of these, three — Laos, Brunei and Philippines — didn’t attempt to qualify.
This list doesn’t include Israel, who for political and safety reasons play with UEFA (Europe.) Countries like Russia and Turkey, with territory in both Asia and Europe, play with UEFA.
Full list, showing the membership in the four Asian football federations, is at the bottom.
How many teams qualify for World Cup 2010?
Four AFC teams automatically qualify by finishing in one of the top two spots in each Round 4 group of five teams.
The third-place teams in each group can still qualify, but they have to do it by emerging victorious from two playoffs. First, they play each other. Then the winner will play the top Oceania team in a two-leg playoff.
And yes, this does mean that if the Asian team wins, there will be no Oceania team at World Cup.
How do teams qualify?
Here is where I bow down in awe of Wikipedia. My word-descriptions will never beat their graphics. To see this in table form, visit their AFC 2010 World Cup qualifying page.
For an AFC team to advance to World Cup 2010, teams have to get through four rounds of qualifying.
The top five teams are given byes for the first two rounds. For 2010, these teams were: Australia, Korea Republic, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Iran
For Round 1, the teams were divided into two pots. Pot A was the teams seeded 6-24, and Pot B was the teams seeded 25-43. One team from each Pot was drawn randomly to create the first-round pairings. They played each other, home and away. Winner moved on.
Round 2 is where things get a little complicated. Of the nineteen Round 1 winners, the eleven top-seeded teams got to skip Round 2 and go directly to Round 3. The remaining eight teams seeds 12-15 were in one pot, and seeds 16-19 were in the other. Again, random draw, home and away leg. The four winners advanced to Round 3
Round 3 is the round where the top seeds come in to play the winners of the earlier rounds. Add up the top five seeds who got the bye to this point, the eleven teams advancing straight from Round 1, and the four that advance from Round 2 and you have a total of twenty teams remaining.
They drew from four pots to create five groups of four teams each. From Wikipedia, which knows all:
The seeding for the main draw was the same for the first two stages, with the exception that the five seeded nations (those that qualified for the 2006 finals) were ordered on the basis of results in the 2006 finals tournament. This saw Iran move from fifth to third, and Japan and Saudi Arabia ranked equal fourth.
Each team in the group played all others in the group, home and away. Top two advanced to Round 4.
Round 4: Here’s how the Round 4 draw worked, again according to the magic of Wikipedia:
The top 6 ranked qualifiers were split into 3 pots of 2 teams, with the bottom 4 ranked nations grouped together in a separate pot. Each group was allocated 1 team from each of Pots 1, 2 and 3, and 2 teams from Pot 4.
Where do things stand now?
We’re now down to the final ten teams and heading into the fourth and final round, which will start in September.
Again, the top two from each group will go through to World Cup 2010. The third place teams will play each other, and the winner will play the top Oceania team for the final spot.
Group A
Australia
Japan
Bahrain
Uzbekistan
Qatar
Group B
South Korea
Iran
Saudi Arabia
North Korea
UAE
Complete list of all Asian Football Confederation teams, divided by federation:
ASEAN Football Federation
Australia
Brunei
Cambodia
Timor-Leste
Indonesia
Laos
Malaysia
Myanmar
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Vietnam
East Asian Football Federation
China PR
Chinese Taipei
Guam
Hong Kong
Japan
Korea DPR
Korea Republic
Macau
Mongolia
Northern Mariana Islands (provisional)
West Asian Football Federation
Bahrain
Iran
Iraq
Jordan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Oman
Palestine
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Yemen
Central and South Asian Football Federation
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Bhutan
India
Kyrgyzstan
Maldives
Nepal
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Other summer, 2008, World Cup qualifying Updates:
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Comments
By shane | July 11th, 2008 at 7:28 am 
I hope this is the year that Uzbekistan breakthrough. They have been improving for some time and were the best team in the previous group stage. I hope they will become first time qualifiers.
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United States
By richard | July 11th, 2008 at 8:05 am forgive my dreadful ignorance, but where is Kazakhstan? did they stop playing football? i know i’ve seen them in Asian competition before…
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By Steven | July 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am They came over to the European qualifiers.
By Mele419 | July 11th, 2008 at 9:01 am Question: Where is Armenia? They are not part of Europe/UEFA, and I don’t see them here, so do they not belong to any football federation? They are ranked in the FIFA world rankings (albeit something like 164…)
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By shane | July 11th, 2008 at 9:06 am Armenia are in UEFA despite being in Asia. So are a number of other nations such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and the previously mentioned Israel and Kazakhstan.
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By Laurie | July 11th, 2008 at 10:31 am Wikipedia (LOVE Wikipedia) lists these countries as having some territory in Asia but playing in UEFA:
Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Russia.
These are listed as “teams such as…” so there are probably more, most of them, I’m guessing, former Soviet states and Eastern bloc countries.
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By Evil Han | July 11th, 2008 at 3:05 pm AFC is one of the most weakest continental regions within FIFA. Along with OFC and CONCACAF is in the same category. My assume guess for AFC nations to qualify 2010 WC in SA or a relocation to USA: Japan, South Korea, China, Iran (Unfortunately), and Saudi Arabia (Unfortunately). There you have it!
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By shane | July 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm Evil Han: China have already been eliminated.
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By Martin | July 11th, 2008 at 6:22 pm Hey shane, Evil Han was dumb enough to predict Canada to net the third CONCACAF spot purely on their being the only developed country (along with USA and Mexico)..
By Evil Han | July 11th, 2008 at 6:42 pm Hey Martin, I was trying to write that Canada has the money to invest into soccer. Remember 2007 Gold Cup dumb ass? The Canadians made it up to the semi-finals. Unfortunately, they got robbed by a goal to tie against USA. Slowly, but surely Canada’s soccer program will be competable with USA and Mexico. Therefore, the Canadians will qualify for 2010 World Cup.
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By -nickt.- | July 12th, 2008 at 7:22 am i think australia’s move has more to do with thinking it can qualify staight up from asia with better regularity than it would if it had to have a playoff with a south american team every time but not wanting to bump of teams 3,000,000-nil does sound more noble.
By samboy | July 13th, 2008 at 6:04 am Somehow, all of you made me feel envious about speaking of teams and so on. We have been merely struggling to create one for our country but the government seem to be always on second thoughts about it.
By Martin | July 15th, 2008 at 6:32 am Oh I get it know, Han. You’re the kind of guy whose entire knowledge base for football depends on one tournament. You know who else made the semifinals in that tournament?
Grenada.
Silly kid. Hopefully, as you watch more tournaments, you’ll realize it’s never that simple. Football is not the Olympics, where the US can dominate simply based on being the most developed country with large population. It’s not just about how much money you can pour into the program, it’s also about having an ample talent pool… and a strategy. Notice that developed countries have to inevitably draw from a smaller talent pool: sports is a risky career choice (that won’t feed you well into your 60s, at least if you don’t “make it”), so if the opportunity for other careers are viable, you are less likely to choose it. This is why plenty of lesser developing countries without much resources have been able to succeed, even in recent tournaments.
To use your method: Greece is by no means a financially powerful nation with plenty of resources to spend on football, especially compared to the rest of Europe. Iraq’s economy was by no means healthy, especially when compared to Japan/South Korea/Saudi Arabia.
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By Evil Han | July 16th, 2008 at 9:24 am @Martin,
Gee, thanx for writing me “SILLY KID” about my knowledge of soccer. I understand that you have some sort of guilt and simpathy for third world nations. Which it is quite fine. Since you wrote some absurd comments on this wrong blog. How CONCACAF nations qualify for any major soccer events.
Well, let me reply back to you about the CONCACAF’s qualification and talent pools. Unfortunately, it is one of the most limited and weakest continental regions within FIFA. Therefore you have 3 spots to qualify for the WC. Which national teams qualify? Most likely: USA, Mexico, and other.
The CONCACAF regions: Central America and Carribean Islands do have some lack of talent soccer players within their rightful nations. Reason is, those specific nations must financially invest into their soccer programs. In order to compete against other powerhouse nations of soccer. This conclusion goes similar with the AFC and OFC regions.
Meanwhile, I understand your logic for the powerhouse soccer nations. No matter! How much money and talent successful nations have doesn’t mean that they will win in every major sporting event as champions. Therefore, a professional athlete’s career doesn’t last forever like a Superman.
Anyway I wrote what I wrote! If you have any constructive criticism. Then onto the next round!
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By Martin | July 16th, 2008 at 12:14 pm Let’s see how this plays out then. We’ll know either by the end of this year or next!
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