The third and fourth rounds of the World Preliminary Tournament are about to be contested, and the number of qualifiers in Asia has been expanded to 8After 5, in addition to Japan, South Korea, Australia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, the remaining five teams that have qualified steadily, the remaining up to 4 places have made second-rate teams such as Jordan, Iraq, China, and Bahrain smell hope.
In fact, judging from the current situation of the World Preliminaries, after the two rounds of matches in March, the qualifying situation of the nine groups will usher in earth-shaking changes. First of all, let's look at the teams that qualified early, and it is no surprise that there will be a total of 8 teams, and they are Japan, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq who have won all of them. In the first two rounds of the group stage, they played at a dominant level, so there is no suspense about breaking through to the round of 36, and they are also the biggest favorites to qualify for the World Cup.
Of course, except for these 8 teams that have qualified steadily, the rest are in a chaotic situation. The most suspenseful group is Group E, in which Iran, the former Asian hegemon, is in the group of death. After the first two rounds, the group has created two draws in four games, Iran and Uzbekistan currently have four points each, Turkmenistan and Hong Kong each have one point, and the gap between the four teams is only three points at most, and the result of one game can change the ranking of the entire group, so Iran is at risk of being knocked out.
In contrast, the groups of Iraq, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia are somewhat lackluster. The overall ranking of these four teams is the lowest in each grade, which can be called a duel between fish belly. However, this has also created a dark horse team like Iraq, especially after beating Japan in the Asian Cup, Iraq's confidence has increased greatly, and it is a new army that cannot be ignored in Asia. In addition to Iraq, Malaysia has also won two consecutive victories in the World Preliminary Tournament, and this team, which is not ranked as good as the national football team, is also rising strongly.
On the Chinese team's side, although it is difficult to qualify for the tournament in advance, judging from the ranking of the entire group, the probability of the national football team breaking through to the round of 36 is very high. In particular, in the third and fourth rounds, China will face Singapore over two legs, the worst opponent in the group, having lost the first two games to South Korea and Thailand 1-3 respectively. Therefore, the national football team is expected to win two consecutive games against Singapore to secure the second place in the group. After the South Korean team was exposed to the scandal of Son Heung-min and Lee Gang-in's infighting, they met a united Thailand, and they were afraid that they would suffer their first defeat in the world preliminaries.