Iran is the first Asian team to win tickets to the World Cup?

 Iran is the first Asian team to win tickets to the World Cup?

With 10 points more than the third-placed UAE team, Iran only needs to win one more match to win tickets to the 2022 World Cup 3 rounds early.

The third qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup in Asia is divided into two groups A and B. The top two teams of each group will win tickets directly to the World Cup, the two third-placed teams must eliminate each other to choose the Asian representative to attend. Intercontinental play-off against a South American team.

Based on that formula, Iran is holding the biggest advantage.

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The situation of Group A shows that Iran will almost certainly be the first Asian representative to have a ticket to Qatar 2022. Graphics: Minh Phuc.

In Group A of the third qualifying round, Iran (16 points) and South Korea (14 points) are sharing the top two positions. The UAE third-place team has only 6 points when the group has only 4 matches left. If Iran wins Iraq in the next match, Iran will be at least 10 points ahead of the UAE and become the first Asian representative to have a ticket to the 2022 World Cup.

The possibility of Iran winning tickets 3 rounds early is very high because they only have to meet Iraq, the team that did not play well in this World Cup qualifying round without a win. They also lost 0-3 to Iran in the first leg last September.

After Iran, South Korea is likely to be the second Asian representative to win tickets to Qatar. They are 8 points ahead of the UAE and only have to meet Lebanon in the next match.

In Group B, the situation is more tense when there are 3 teams that have participated in the 2018 World Cup: Saudi Arabia (16 points), Japan (12 points) and Australia (11 points). All three are aiming for a direct ticket, not a challenging play-off series.

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The Vietnamese team will run out of opportunities to go to the 2022 World Cup if they don't beat Australia in the next match. Graphics: Minh Phuc.

Among these, Saudi Arabia has the advantage when it has created a 4-point gap with Japan. The competition for second place is therefore mainly a matter of Japan and Australia. The Oceania team started well but did not win the last 3 matches, in contrast to Japan, started badly but had 9 points in the last 3 matches.

With the bottom teams in both groups, the most likely goal is to compete for third place, equivalent to a ticket to the play-off. In Group A, this race is still extremely fierce when the distance between the UAE and the bottom group of Syria is only 4 points. They will join Lebanon and Iraq to compete for a ticket to the play-off with opponents from Group B.

In Group B, Oman (7 points) and China (5 points) need a lot of effort to shorten the gap with the top 3 teams.

Coach Park Hang-seo's Vietnam team is the only team that has not won any points after 6 matches in the third qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup in Asia. If they don't beat Australia (11 points) in the next match, the Vietnamese team will officially give up hope of winning tickets to the 2022 World Cup. Vietnam is also the team that concedes the most (12 goals conceded), the lowest difference. (-8) World Cup qualifiers.