The

AFC AFC may stand for: Organizations * Action for Children, a UK children's charity * AFC Enterprises, the franchisor of Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits * Africa Finance Corporation, a pan-African multilateral development finance institution * A ...

second round of

2022 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2022 FIFA World Cup qualificationAlso the "FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Qualifiers". was the qualifying process which decided the 31 teams that would join hosts Qatar, who received an automatic spot, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Parallel tourn ...

, which also served as the second round of

2023 AFC Asian Cup qualification The 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualification was the qualification process organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to determine the participating teams for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup, the 18th edition of the international men's football champion ...

, was played from 5 September 2019 to 15 June 2021.

Format

A total of forty teams were drawn into eight groups of five to play home-and-away round-robin matches. They included the 34 teams (teams ranked 1–34 in the AFC entrant list) which received byes to this round, and the six winners from the

first round First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

. Seven group winners (excluded Qatar, who had already qualified to the World Cup as tournament host) and the five best runners-up advanced to the third round. Matches in this round were also part of the 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualifying campaign. The twelve teams which advanced to the third round of the FIFA World Cup qualification and Qatar, as group winner, automatically qualified for the

2023 AFC Asian Cup The 2023 AFC Asian Cup will be the 18th edition of the AFC Asian Cup, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Asia organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It will involve 24 national teams after expansion in 201 ...

. Twenty-four teams (22 which advanced directly and two which will advance from an additional play-off round) will play in the third round of the AFC Asian Cup qualification to decide the remaining eleven teams. In total, the 2023 AFC Asian Cup features 24 teams.

Seeding

The draw for the second round was held on 17 July 2019 at 17:00 MST (

UTC+8 UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00. With an estimated population of 1.708 billion living within the time zone, roughly 24% of the world population, it is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a ...

), at the AFC House in

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = ''Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , sub ...

, Malaysia. The seeding was based on the FIFA World Rankings of June 2019 (shown in parentheses below). Note: Bolded teams qualified for the

third round Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * Hig ...

. ^†

First round First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

winners
^W Withdrew after five matches

Schedule

The schedule of each matchday was as follows. On 5 March 2020, FIFA announced that it would be monitoring the health situation in the region for possible rescheduling of matchdays 7 through 10 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. Later on 9 March, FIFA and AFC jointly announced that the matches on matchdays 7–10 due to take place in March and June 2020 were postponed, with the new dates to be confirmed. 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 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 scheduled to kick off on 12 and 17 November. On 12 August, FIFA announced that the matches scheduled for October and November 2020 would be rescheduled to 2021. On 11 November 2020, the AFC Competitions Committee agreed at its third meeting that all remaining second round matches should be completed by 15 June 2021 with matchdays 7 and 8 in March and matchdays 9 and 10 in June. On the same day, however, FIFA, along with the Bangladeshi and Qatari associations, gave approval to the only second round match originally scheduled for 2020, Qatar versus Bangladesh, which was played on 4 December. On 19 February 2021, FIFA and AFC postponed the majority of the upcoming matches to June. Note: The group spots of Qatar and Bangladesh were swapped due to Qatar's planned participation in the 2020 Copa América, which was later deferred (becoming the

2021 Copa América The 2021 Copa América was the 47th edition of the Copa América, the international men's football championship organised by South America's football ruling body CONMEBOL. The tournament took place in Brazil from 13 June to 10 July 2021. The tou ...

). Qatar eventually withdrew.

Centralised venues

On 12 March 2021, AFC confirmed the hosts for the group stage scheduled to take place from 31 May to 15 June. *Group A: United Arab Emirates (China hosted Guam on 28 May.) *Group B: Kuwait *Group C: Bahrain *Group D: Saudi Arabia *Group E: Qatar *Group F: Japan *Group G: United Arab Emirates *Group H: South Korea In general these hosts were the seeded (Pot 1) teams from each group. The exceptions were Group A (where United Arab Emirates took over hosting duties after China could not host due to COVID-19 restrictions), Group B (where Pot 4 team Kuwait hosted rather than Australia) and Group C (where Pot 3 team Bahrain were chosen rather than Iran).

Groups

Group A

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group B

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group C

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group D

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group E

The group spots of Qatar and Bangladesh were swapped due to Qatar's planned participation in the 2020 Copa América. The tournament was later deferred (becoming the

), and eventually Qatar withdrew from it. ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group F

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group G

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Group H

North Korea withdrew due to safety concerns related to the

, therefore the results of their matches were excluded from the group standings. ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Goalscorers

Ranking of runner-up teams

Group H contained only four teams compared to five teams in all other groups after North Korea withdrew. Therefore, the results against the fifth-placed team were not counted when determining the ranking of the runner-up teams.

Ranking of fifth-placed teams

Notes

References

External links

*
Qualifiers – Asia Matches: Round 2
FIFA.com

the-AFC.com

the-AFC.com
Preliminary Joint Qualification 2022
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