The last 2 rounds of the World Preliminary Championship Asian Round of 36 will start in June, and only Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Japan, Australia, Iran, and Uzbekistan 7 teams have advanced to the round of 18 in advance.
In addition to Japan, Australia, Iran and other teams, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, which have not yet qualified, are only one point away from qualifying.
As the triple champion of the Asian Cup, Saudi Arabia has been ranked among the first-class teams in Asia in recent years, and has qualified for the World Cup finals for two consecutive times.
This time in the round of 36, Saudi Arabia was in the same group as Jordan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, and won 3 wins and 1 draw in the first 4 rounds, but failed to qualify for the second round in advance, which came from the fourth round away to Tajikistan and caused a big upset.
Tajikistan, which is from Central Asia, was previously at the level of fish belly, but now through the vigorous development of youth training, it has become one of the third or fourth class in Asia, and is approaching the strength of the national football team, and the world ranking has risen to 99th.
Compared with the 0-3 defeat of the national football team at home, South Korea did not have the power to fight back, and Tajikistan almost won the game against Saudi Arabia in back-to-back matches. First of all, Tajikistan faced Saudi Arabia only 0-1 defeat, the two sides possessed the ball five to five, Tajikistan shot 11 to 9, shot on target 3 to 5, and then at home, Tajikistan was also not at a disadvantage, shot 12 to 15, shot 4 to 5, and finally fell behind to pull the score to a 1-1 draw.
Winning a valuable 1 point allowed Tajikistan not only to retain the qualifying situation, but also to prevent Saudi Arabia from qualifying two rounds ahead of schedule, which also disrupted the world preliminaries.
However, Tajikistan's qualification situation is not as good as that of the national football team, and if Tajikistan loses to Jordan in the next round, it will be eliminated one round earlier.
At present, the national football team has 7 points in 4 rounds and temporarily ranks second in the group, and will face Thailand at home in the next round, taking the fate of qualification in their own hands, it depends on whether coach Ivankovic can lead the national football team to win, so as to lock in the qualification for the first round in advance.
Once lost to Thailand, the national football team points will be chased, and there is a high probability that they will lose to South Korea in the final round, and Thailand will have a high probability of winning Singapore at home, so that the national football team will fall to the third place in the group and be eliminated, then our World Cup dream will only fall in the round of 36 stage.