Nationals get competitive draw for World Cup qualifiers

TDT | Manama                             

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain’s senior men’s national football team were yesterday drawn in a competitive Group H for the second round of the Asian qualifiers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The draw for qualification’s first two stages took place at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Bahrainis have emerged in the same group as the UAE, and either Yemen or Sri Lanka and Nepal or Laos.

Yemen, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Laos will all be competing in the first round of qualifiers, to be held over two legs on 12 and 17 October. Ten winners from this stage will proceed to round two, where they are joined by 26 teams, including Bahrain, to form the 36 sides in the nine groups of four.

Matches in each group will be played in a home-and-away, round-robin format between November of this year and June of 2024. There are five rounds in all in the AFC qualifiers’ format for the World Cup.

Eight Asian teams will book their tickets to the global showcase plus potentially another following an inter-confederation play-off. At the end of the second round, the nine group winners and runners-up advance to the third round.

In addition to this, they will also automatically qualify for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. In the third round of the World Cup qualifiers, the 18 teams will be divided into three groups of six.

After playing one another on a home-and-away basis, the top two of each group qualify directly for the World Cup, while the third and fourth-placed teams advance to the fourth round.

In round four, the six teams are divided into two groups of three. They play against each other once in a neutral venue. The winners of each group qualify for the World Cup, and the runners-up of each advance to the fifth round. There, they will compete home and away to determine the Asian representation at the inter-confederation play-offs.