Home and away for Asian World Cup qualifiers
Home and away for Asian World Cup qualifiers
ZURICH (AFP): The final Asian World Cup qualifying round will be played on a home and away basis, soccer's governing body FIFA decided Monday.
Kuala Lumpur, Bahrain and Singapore had bid to hold a finals tournament as in past Asian qualifying competitions.
But FIFA's World Cup Organizing Committee, chaired by Lennart Johansson, decided against a single tournament venue Monday.
Saudi Arabia and South Korea -- who played in the 1994 USA World Cup -- were seeded.
They will be kept apart when two groups of five teams are drawn Tuesday.
The other eight which will go into Tuesday's draw are China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Japan, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
The winner of each group will automatically qualify and the runners-up in each group will play-off for the right to directly qualify for the World Cup finals in France next year.
The loser of the playoff will face Australia, the Oceania Zone winners, on a home and away basis for a place in France.
The decision to abandon the tournament format met with a mixed reception from Chinese officials.
"It's a big change," said Wang Junsheng, the Chinese Football Association general secretary. "The timing for the second round had been decided last year and our league has been arranged according to that schedule. It will take at least eight to 10 weeks for our league to finish.
"We will have to re-arrange everything, including the league and the preparation for the national team.
"Frankly, though, home and away is a fair competition, but our problem is with the timing," he said.
Chinese coach Qi Wusheng was pragmatic.
"I have no choice," he said. "The decision has been made so we will have to get ready and we will have to get the team into camp as soon as possible.
"The fans will be happy about this and, of course, the players will have a good opportunity to play well in front of their own people," he said.
Venue
A decision will be made Aug. 12 whether the European Group 9 World Cup qualifying match between Albania and Northern Ireland can be played in Albania as scheduled, FIFA announced Monday.
Football's international governing body said it had decided to wait another three weeks before deciding whether the match should be switched from the Albanian capital Tirana.
The match is due to be played in Tirana on September 10 but has been put in doubt by the volatile political situation in Albania.
Two of Albania's previous home matches, against Germany and Ukraine, were played in Spain for security reasons.
The bureau of FIFA's World Cup organizing committee said recent developments in Albania necessitated the further delay in making a decision.
The FIFA bureau also decided that three qualifying matches postponed for various reasons, Gabon vs Sierra Leone, Syria vs Krygzstan and Yemen vs Uzbekistan should be played for reasons of principle, even though the results can no longer affect the qualifying process.