AFC reveals teams seeded for WCQ

Maldives may face Indonesia (Red) in round one

Male', MALDIVES - Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has revealed the teams that will play in the World Cup 2010 qualification and how the teams will progress in the qualification phase. A total of 43 teams have been seeded for the World’s biggest sports event that will be held in South Africa in 2010 and a total of four rounds, excluding AFC and AFC/OFC playoff, will be played.

43 teams that have been seeded for the qualification are;

1. Australia 2. Korea Republic 3. Saudi Arabia 4. Japan 5. IR. Iran 6. Bahrain 7. Uzbekistan 8. Kuwait 9. DPR Korea 10. China 11. Jordan 12. Iraq 13. Lebanon 14. Oman 15. UAE 16. Qatar 17. Syria 18. Palestine 19. Thailand 20. Turkmenistan 21. Tajikistan 22. Indonesia 23. Hong Kong 24. Yemen 25. Vietnam 26. Kyrgyzstan 27. Maldives 28. India 29. Singapore 30. Sri Lanka 31. Malaysia 32. Chinese Taipei 33. Bangladesh 34. Macau 35. Pakistan 36. Afghanistan 37. Mongolia 38. Guam 39. Nepal 40. Cambodia 41. Bhutan 42. Myanmar 43. Timor Leste

Teams seeded from 1-5 will start their qualification campaign from round 3.

Round 1 will be played between the teams seeded from 6-43 and teams seeded from 6-24 will be placed in pot A and the rest will be in pot B. Each team from pot A will draw with a pot B team and will play two games of home and away. The home and away games of round one is scheduled to play on 8th October 2007 and 28th October 2007, but according to AFC the dates can be changed by the teams but must be completed by 28th October. Out of the 19 winners in round one the best eleven (based on their ranking) will advance to the round three and the rest will head to round two.

In round 2, the eight teams (the eight lowest ranked teams among the winners of round 1) will draw with another team and will play home and away basis, the winners (4 teams) will reach round 3. Matches in this round are scheduled to start on 9th November and complete by 27th November.

In round 3, 11 teams from round one (the eleven top ranked teams) will team up with four winners of round two and best five of seeded teams (seed 1-5). These 20 teams will be split into five groups of four and first and second from each group (10 teams) will reach round 4. This round is scheduled to start on 6th February 2008 and complete by 10th September 2008.

In round 4, the ten teams that advanced from round 3 will be split into two groups of five and the first and second team of each group (4 teams) will get a ticket to World Cup 2010. Matches in this round are scheduled to start on 15th October 2008 and complete by 9th September 2009.

Teams that finish on third of each group (2 teams) will play AFC play off on home and away basis. These games will be played on 10th October 2009 and 14th October 2009, the winner of AFC playoff will face the winner of Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) in a breath taking home and away AFC/OFC playoff to find who goes through to the World Cup. The AFC/OFC play off will be played on 14th November 2009 and 21st November 2009.

___________________________________________________________________________