The third round of AFC matches for the

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was played from 2 September 2021 to 29 March 2022.

Format

The twelve teams that advanced from the

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(the seven group winners excluding Qatar and the five best group runners-up) were divided into two groups of six teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The top two teams of each group qualified for the

2022 FIFA World Cup The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the 22nd FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022, after the country was awarded the hosting ri ...

, and the two third-placed teams advanced to the

fourth round Fourth or the fourth may refer to: * the ordinal form of the number 4 * ''Fourth'' (album), by Soft Machine, 1971 * Fourth (angle), an ancient astronomical subdivision * Fourth (music), a musical interval * ''The Fourth'', a 1972 Soviet drama ...

. World Cup hosts

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won Group E in the second round (which meant they advanced to the

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finals) but were not required to qualify for the World Cup.

Qualified teams

Draw and seeding

The draw for the third round was held on 1 July 2021 at 15:00 MST (

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), in

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, Malaysia. The seeding for the draw was based on a special release of the

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for Asian teams on 18 June 2021 (shown in parentheses below). Each group contained one team from each of the six pots. Note: Bolded teams qualified directly for the

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. ''Italicised'' teams qualified for the

Schedule

Due to the

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, FIFA announced on 12 August 2020 that the upcoming qualifying matches originally scheduled for 2020 were moved to 2021, and on 11 November, the AFC Competitions Committee also announced that the final round of the Asian qualifiers would begin in September 2021 and be finished by March 2022.

Groups

Group A

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Group B