Since 1930 a total of 21 World Cups have been held including the 2018 World Cup. Soon the 22nd World Cup is also going to be held in Qatar. 2022 World Cup will run from November 20 to December 18. Only a month is left for the world cup and it is already making fans’ hearts beat go fast. Every time the World Cup comes with a different and spectacular energy which fills people with enthusiasm and craze. When it comes to the craze of football it can be just credited to South America or Europe but the whole world is passionate about the game. Honestly this is one of the several characteristics which makes it unique and the most popular sport in the world.
Since the 2022 World Cup has been announced, everyone is curious to know which teams or nations are going to compete in the tournament. Well it is a very significant question because teams and players are who make the competition interesting. You must remember that the qualifying teams(32) of the world cup never come from a single continent as the game demands equal representation of all regions. To maintain this tradition, countries from 7 regions qualify but the number of countries coming from a region varies.
Number of teams from different regions:
Africa (CAF): 5
Europe (UEFA): 13
Asia (AFC): 4 (plus 1 playoff qualifier)
Oceania (OFC): 1 playoff qualifier
North/central America and Caribbean (CONCACAF): 3 (+1 playoff qualifier)
South America (CONMEBOL): 4 (+1 playoff qualifier)
32 teams which are going to play in the 2022 World Cup have been selected from different regions. 13 qualified Nations for the 2022 World Cup are from Europe, four from Asia, four from South America, 5 from Africa and the last 4 teams have been qualified from North America and Australia, a member of the Asian confederation. But the most important thing is which 32 teams qualify for the upcoming next world cup.
How many teams will qualify for World Cup 2022 from Europe
As you already know, since 1978 32 teams have qualified for the world cup tournament. This number will change to 48 from the 2026 World Cup onwards. As of the 2022 tournament, 13 slots in the final tournament were available for Europe(UEFA). This is the only continent from which more than 10 Nations will complete. The Union of European football associations (UEFA) has 55 national teams. All of the 55 jumped into qualification.
The qualification format was finalised by UEFA executive committee on December 4, 2019 in a meeting in Nyon, Switzerland. On the same day, UEFA announced that the video assistant referee system would be used for qualification but it wasn’t implemented due to the sudden entrance of Covid. After the impact of Covid reduced and things began to be normal, on August 5, 2021 UEFA announced that the VAR system would be used for remaining qualification.
Qualifier teams for 2022 World Cup from Europe
The qualification partially depended on the results of the 2020-21 UEFA National League. Out of 13 slots, 10 were filled by the winning Nations of ten groups in the qualification round. Two of the seats were given to the two best National League’s winners based on overall ranking. One last remaining slot was given to a playoff team.
10 Groups of which winner directly went to the finals
Group A: Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Azerbaijan, Serbia and Luxembourg.
Group B: Sweden, Georgia, Greece, Spain and Kosovo
Group C: Switzerland, Northern, Ireland, Lithuania, Italy and Bulgaria
Group D: Ukraine, Bosnia, France, Finland, Kazakhstan and Herzegovina
Group E: Wales, Belgium, Belarus, Czech Republic and Estonia
Group F: Denmark, Scotland,, Austria, Israel, Moldova and Faroe Islands
Group G: Turkey, Montenegro, Norway, Netherlands, Latvia and Gibraltar
Group H: Slovakia, Russia, Croatia, Malta, Cyprus and Slovenia
Group I: Hungary, Poland, Albania, England, Andorra and San Marino
Group J: Romania, North Macedonia, Armenia, Liechtenstein and Iceland
National teams selected from Europe are Germany, Denmark, France, Belgium, Croatia, Spain, Serbia, England, Switzerland, Netherlands, Portugal, Poland and Wales. While Qatar (automatically qualified due to having the right of hosting), Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Korea, Japan and Australia have qualified for the World Cup from Asia. Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay from South America. While the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Canada will represent North America. Nations like Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, Cameroon will represent Africa in the World Cup 2022.
Schedule for Qualification
The qualification process of UEFA Nations went on for almost a year. In March 2020 the UEFA declared that the matches planned to take place in June 2020 would be rescheduled as per UEFA Euro 2020 to take place in June and July 2021. On 24th September 2020 UEFA announced that March and September 2021 windows in the international match calendar would be induced from two to three match days. Due to this all windows were extended by one day each. The FIFA council approved the same thing on December 4, 2020 two months after the announcement by UEFA. The qualification matches began from March 2021 and finalized in November 2021.
Two of the rounds were held for qualification and the first one was the group stage. Above mentioned 10 groups competed in this round and winners were also selected. The second round was the playoff stage.
