The 2006 FIFA World Cup European qualification playoffs were a set of home-and-away playoffs to decide the final three places granted to national

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

teams from

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an nations (more precisely,

UEFA The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; ; ) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach soccer, beach football in Europe and the List of transcontinental countries#A ...

members) for the

2006 FIFA World Cup The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international Association football, football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which had won the right to FIFA World Cup hosts ...

. The playoffs were decided by the standard FIFA method of aggregate score, with

away goals The away goals rule is a method of tiebreaking in association football and other sports when teams play each other twice, once at each team's home ground. Under the away goals rule, if the total goals scored by each team are equal, the team that ...

and, if necessary,

extra time Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is required t ...

with the possibility of a

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

at the end of the second leg. The winner of each playoff was awarded a place in the

Qualified teams

Because some groups had six teams and others had seven, matches against the 7th placed team were discarded. The two best ranked runners-up also qualified to the World Cup. The other six runners-up were drawn into three two-legged knock out matches.

Seeding and draw

By the rules of the UEFA qualifying tournament, the first-place finishers in each of eight groups received automatic berths, along with the two second-place teams that had earned the most points against teams in the top six of their individual groups. The six remaining second-place teams were divided into two pots based on their standings in the September 2005

FIFA World Rankings The FIFA Men's World Ranking is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, first introduced in December 1992. The men's teams of the member nations of FIFA, football's world governing body, are ranked based on their gam ...

. The division was: A draw was held on 14 October 2005 at

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

headquarters in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

to pair each team from Pot 1 with a team from Pot 2. A second draw at the same time and location determined the order of the fixtures.

Matches

''Spain won 6–2 on aggregate.'' ---- ''4–4 on aggregate. Switzerland won on away goals.'' ---- ''Czech Republic won 2–0 on aggregate.''

Goalscorers

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:World Cup Playoff UEFA

Play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

2005–06 in Slovak football

play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

2005–06 in Turkish football 2005–06 in Swiss football 2005 in Norwegian football