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Friday, April 1, 2016

2018 FIFA World Cup: AFC 3rd round seeding

Looking at the December sims, only Korea DPR missed out, with China managing to squeeze through.

Assuming the April 2016 FIFA ranking will be used to seed the 12 teams, this is how the pots will look like: 


Iran                 672
Australia            601
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Korea Republic       579
Japan                577
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Saudi Arabia         559
Uzbekistan           549
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United Arab Emirates 521
China PR             423
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Qatar                416
Iraq                 333
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Syria                316
Thailand             297

Pot 1: Iran, Australia
Pot 2: Korea Republic, Japan
Pot 3: Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan
Pot 4: United Arab Emirates, China PR
Pot 5: Qatar, Iraq
Pot 6: Syria, Thailand

Even if FIFA gave Korea Republic a 3-0 win in their unplayed match vs. Kuwait, their total points would be 588, not enough to overtake the Socceroos. And if FIFA somehow decide to remove all matches involving Kuwait, Korea Republic's total would drop to 566 - still safe in Pot 2.

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2 comments:

  1. UnknownApril 2, 2016 at 9:36 PM

    This is correct. And yes, they will use the April rankings from April 7th I believe.

    We could see a group like Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Syria - which would be extremely tough.

    I'm personally hoping to see something like this -

    A - Australia, S. Korea, Saudi Arabia, China, Iraq, Thailand
    B - Iran, Japan, Uzbekistan, UAE, Qatar, Syria

    Seems more balanced. But we'll see.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 5, 2016 at 12:43 PM

    All the pots are balanced with the exception of the Iraq one.

    Imo Iraq are a much more difficult opponent than Qatar. Whichever group gets Iraq will be tougher.

    ReplyDelete