MADRID 12 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
This Friday, the Spanish men’s soccer team will find out its rivals in the qualifying phase for the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada, in a draw where it will start in pot 1 so it will avoid powerful rivals.
The FIFA headquarters in Zurich (Switzerland) will host, starting at 12:00 p.m., this draw where the European champion will find out her path to the next World Cup where she hopes to be one of the 16 qualified and continue without missing a great international event since his absence in the 1992 Euro Cup.
This qualification will be held between March and November 2025 and will consist of a total of 12 groups of four or five teams each. In this sense, as indicated by the national team, if Spain beats the Netherlands and gets into the ‘Final Four’ of the League of Nations, it will be placed no matter what in a group of only four teams and its classification of September to November 2025. If not, it could fall indistinctly into a group, which in the case of five teams, would begin playing in June.
As for possible rivals, the team coached by Luis de la Fuente will avoid France, England, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Croatia, Switzerland, Austria and Denmark, while the second pot will have Ukraine, Sweden, Turkey, Wales, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Czechia and Norway.
Number 3 is made up of Scotland, Slovenia, Republic of Ireland, Albania, North Macedonia, Georgia, Finland, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Israel, and number 4 is made up of Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Belarus, Kosovo, Armenia, Kazakhstan, which cannot be included with Spain, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Latvia and Lithuania. Moldova, Malta, Andorra, Gibraltar, which also cannot fall into the ‘Red’ group, Liechtenstein and San Marino make up 5.
Only the first in each group will get a direct ticket for the World Cup, while the second and the four best-ranked group winners of the 24-25 Nations League who did not finish this phase either first or second will seek the remaining four through some ‘play-offs’ that will consist of four qualifying rounds of four teams each, with two semi-finals and a single-match final in March 2026 to decide the last winners.