On 11 November 2020, the AFC Competitions Committee announced that all the Asian qualifiers second round matches should be completed by 15 June 2021 with matchdays 7 and 8 in March 2021 and matchdays 9 and 10 in June 2021 with the final round of the Asian qualifiers beginning in September 2021. On 25 June 2020, FIFA announced that the inter-confederation play-offs, originally scheduled to be played in March 2022, were moved to June. On 12 August, FIFA announced that the matches scheduled for October and November 2020 would be rescheduled to 2021. On 5 June, AFC confirmed that matchdays 7 and 8 were scheduled to take place on 8 and 13 October respectively while matchdays 9 and 10 were also scheduled to kick off on 12 and 17 November. However, subject to approval by FIFA and AFC, and agreement of both member associations, the matches may be played as scheduled provided that the safety of all individuals involved meets the required standards. On 9 March 2020, FIFA and AFC announced that the second round matches on matchdays 7–10 due to take place in March and June 2020 were postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the new dates to be confirmed. The schedule of the competition is expected to be as follows, according to the FIFA International Match Calendar. From the April 2019 FIFA World Rankings Bye to the second round However, as FIFA did not ban them from the World Cup qualifiers, Timor-Leste was allowed to enter the competition, but ineligible to qualify for the Asian Cup. Timor-Leste was banned from participating in the Asian Cup qualification after being found to have fielded a total of 12 ineligible players in 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification matches among other competitions. For seeding in the second round and third round draws, the most recent FIFA Rankings prior to those draws will be used.Īccording to the joint format of the World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers, both Qatar (as the host nation of the 2022 World Cup) and China PR (as the host nation of the 2023 Asian Cup) also entered the second round of the qualifiers. The FIFA World Rankings of April 2019 were used to determine which nations would compete in the first round. The winner will advance to the inter-confederation play-offs.Īll 46 FIFA-affiliated nations from the AFC entered qualification.
Fourth round: The two third-placed teams from the third round will play a single match.The top two teams of each group will qualify for the World Cup, and the third-placed teams will advance to the fourth round.
Originally, the eight group winners and the four best group runners-up were supposed advance to the third round of FIFA World Cup qualification, as well as qualified for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup.