Twenty-four teams compete for the remaining 11 qualifying tickets for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup in the final third round of qualifying starting today, Wednesday.
Our team, along with China, Japan, Syria, reigning champions Qatar, South Korea, Australia, Iran, UAE, Iraq, Oman, Vietnam and Lebanon, have qualified for the 24-team tournament.
The final round will feature the teams that did not qualify for the final, having advanced to the third round of dual qualification for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The teams of the third round were divided into six groups and will go through the assembly system in Kuwait (Group I), Mongolia (Second), Uzbekistan (Third), India (Fourth), Malaysia (Fifth) and Kyrgyzstan (Sixth). 8, 11 and 14 June.
The champions of each group, as well as the top five teams that took second place in six groups, advance to the final.
Of the 24 teams, six never made it to the finals, with Hong Kong and Cambodia hoping to return to the continental championship after more than half a century away.
Last week, the AFC opened its doors to its national member federations to express their desire to host the final in place of China, which has apologized for not hosting it due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Japan holds the record for most titles (4) against Saudi Arabia and Iran (3), while Qatar won its first-ever title in 2019 in the UAE.
The teams of Jordan and Kuwait were placed in the first group, which included Indonesia and Nepal, while the team of Kuwait hosted the group match.
In the second group, which is being held at the Mongolian Federation Stadium, the Philippines, which competed in the 2019 championship for the first time, will face Yemen, followed by host Mongolia, who are counting on their first participation in the final. with Palestine.
The Palestinian team first participated in the final in 2015 when it was eliminated from the group stage, as it was last time in 2019 in the UAE. As for Yemen, it was his first participation in 2019 when he was eliminated from the group stage with three defeats. In the third group in Uzbekistan, the hosts play with Sri Lanka, and Thailand with the Maldives. In the fourth in India, the hosts will play with Cambodia, and Hong Kong with Afghanistan.
As for the Bahrain national team, which is in Group E in Malaysia, it will play with Bangladesh, and the hosts will go to Turkmenistan. Bahrain has competed in the Continental Championship six times, most notably in 2004 when they finished fourth after losing to Japan, who later won the title after a 4–3 extension.
In the last sixth round in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan will play with Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan will play with Singapore.
