At the end of January 2011, AFC sent a letter to FIFA asking them to change the dates for the 2013 Confederations Cup as it would clash with an official FIFA match date - June 18.
“We request the FIFA Confederations Cup – Brazil 2013 to be scheduled in another period of time that does not clash with the FIFA Official Match Dates already confirmed by FIFA and applied to respective Competition Calendars of different Confederations including AFC,” AFC wrote in a letter to FIFA.
The June 18, 2013 Asian qualifiers is a crucial fourth-round match and is the home stretch for teams looking to book their places in the 2014 FIFA World Cup finals.
Today, AFC came to their senses and announced they will make sure Japan won't have to play on June 18, 2013.
It was also decided to place Japan in position 5 of their group for the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers (final round-Asia) to avert a clash with the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup (June 16-30). Now Japan will have a rest day on June 18 in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers (final round-Asia) that will enable the Asian champions to play in the FIFA Confederations Cup.
Anyone know why Asia goes with a semi-round of FIVE groups of four instead of SIX groups of four -- and why the final round is two groups of FIVE teams instead of two groups of SIX teams?
ReplyDeleteBoth formats require the same number of match dates.
Seems funny to have an odd number of teams in the final groups...
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@ Dorian
ReplyDeleteIt's a good point, I never considered that it would use up no more dates to invite a few more guests to the party. I wonder if the Confederations Cup messes with Asia's schedule like this time. Have they had to use the day off for the Asian Champion before, I wonder?
There is also however the consideration that Asian Cup qualifiers run in the middle of World Cup qualifiers, though whether this has any impact I don't know.
I'll just check and see if teams were playing World Cup qualifiers on the dates of the Confederations Cup. Iraq of course didn't make it to the final 10, but we can still find out if they were playing while the 10 were...
Yes, Asian sides were playing three June qualifiers while Iraq were attending the Asian Cup. I wonder if such a thing could be a problem, Japan missing perhaps three dates. There might be time for them to
fit in a qualifier before heading to the tournament though. That way the other two dates they'd be free.
If anything, that seems to me to be the logic behind the 5 team groups.
Dorian,
ReplyDeleteIt is still more matches, which is harder to organize and cost more.