Kuwait Joins India and Qatar in Group A for World Cup & Asia Cup Qualifiers

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KUALA LUMPUR, July 27, (Agencies): The joint draw for AFC FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifiers and Asia Cup 2027 was held on Thursday at headquarters of the Asian Soccer federation in the Malaysian capital, where the State of Kuwait came in Group A along with Qatar and India. The draw distributed 36 teams to nine groups, each comprising four teams, set to compete between November 2023 and June 2024.

The Kuwaiti team will play its first match against India on November 16. The first and second will qualify for the Asia Cup 2027 due in Saudi Arabia and finals of the World Cup 2026, scheduled in Canada, Mexico and the US. The 2026 edition of the World Cup will be an expanded 48-team affair hence forty five AFC affiliated nations will have the chance to qualify for the tournament.

The qualification process will be played over five rounds while the first two will also double up as the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. The 45 AFC (Asian Football Confederation) teams will be segregated into four pots and will be drawn into nine groups of four teams each. The 18 teams from pot 4 will compete in the first-round qualifiers in October, where they will face off in a two-legged tie to qualify for the second round. Saudi Arabia’s path to the 2026 World Cup in North America will start in a first qualifying group with neighboring Jordan, Tajikistan, and either Cambodia or Pakistan. Players in the Saudi national team – which upset eventual champion Argentina 2-1 to open last year’s tournament in Qatar – will prepare for the next edition training and playing with a slew of global stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema lured to the multi-billion dollar project that the Saudi league has become.

Saudi Arabia’s extra interest in World Cup qualifying is that the top two teams in each of the nine four team groups also goes direct to the 2027 Asian Cup, a tournament that will be hosted in the oil-rich kingdom. None of Asia’s eight direct qualifying places to the expanded 48-team World Cup – co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico – are on offer from this group stage. The 18 teams advancing from the first group stage from November to June 2024 will enter another round of six-team groups next year. In other groups from Thursday’s draw, Japan will face Syria, North Korea plus either Myanmar or Macau, who have a two-leg playoff in October.

The current security situation in Syria, and also Afghanistan and Yemen, means those teams are likely to play “home” games in neutral countries. Australia’s home-based players will have at least one round trip of about 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) in a group with Palestine, Lebanon and either Maldives or Bangladesh. South Korea, whose run of 10 straight qualifications started at the 1986 World Cup, is in a group with China, Thailand and either Singapore or Guam. South Korea is now led by Jurgen Klinsmann, who is aiming for a third World Cup as coach after his native Germany in 2006 and the United States at the 2014 tournament.

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