Towards Qatar 2022: groups, qualifiers, matches and stadiums

The European road to Qatar 2022 starts this week and will go through the 55 countries that fight for the 13 places at stake for just over a year. With the European Championship just around the corner – a year late due to the pandemic – it's time to change your skin and think about the World Cup tournament that will be played on Qatari soil in the autumn of next year. It will be the first World Cup in the middle of a season (from November 21 to December 18, 2022), so its conditions vary.

More countries. It is the first time in history that 55 European teams have fought to qualify for a World Cup. After the incorporation of Kosovo in search of the 2018 Russia appointment, it is now joined by the Russians (classified in advance then as hosts) for this massive preliminary phase.

Groups of 5 and 6. Qualification for Qatar will be done through groups, as usual. The first four, from A to D, are made up of 5 teams because they include the four countries that will play the Final Four of the Nations League. The rest are 6.

There is a playoff. The top 10 in the group qualify directly for the World Cup in Europe; They go to the playoff for 10 seconds, along with the 2 best teams in the Nations League. Among these 12 repechage teams there will be a playoff with three leagues to the semifinals and a final from which the last three classified for Qatar will come out.

Calendar. In just one year the entire classification will be settled. It starts this Wednesday and concludes on March 29 of next year with the dispute of the last matches of the preliminary phase. There will be 10 group games and two playoffs. Both in this break in March and in September, three games will be played instead of two, as usual.

Goals. Unlike UEFA, in which tie-breaks are through direct confrontations, in FIFA the way to tie-break teams is through the general goalaverage. This led to an increase in the total number of goals in the previous World Cup qualifier: 807. That is, an average of 2.9 per game.

There is VAR. Another great novelty in the World Cup qualifying phase in Europe will be the VAR. There was no heading to the Euro (only in the playoffs), but the video refereeing system has also been approved for this round and will be applied from the first matches to the last.

'Play' Qatar. UEFA surprised by accepting Qatar in the European qualifying phase. It will be in group A along with Portugal, Serbia, Ireland, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan. Your points will not count on aggregate, but will allow you to play friendly preparatory matches as if they were official.

Records To date, Cristiano Ronaldo is the top scorer in the history of the European World Cup qualifiers. He has scored 30 goals in 38 games and will be able to expand his numbers also heading to Qatar.

Habitual Germany is the European team, and the world team, with the most participations. He has been in the 21 World Cups, two more than Brazil. Italy, which missed the last, has been in 18. France, England and Spain, in 15. The last European debutant was Iceland (2018).

Lottery. The 13 European countries qualified will join the other 19 from the rest of the continents. The last scheduled matches are the intercontinental playoffs, scheduled for June 2022. At that time, the final phase draw will also take place in Doha, the Qatari capital.

CONCACAF. The preliminary phase started in confederations such as the Asian or the South American, in which four rounds of the Qualifiers have already been disputed. Of course, this double date will not be played for health reasons. In CONCACAF the road also begins during this break, as in Europe. June 6 begins in Africa. The procedure in Oceania is not yet decided.

Chosen. Only 15% of the teams that choose to be in Qatar will have the privilege of being able to do so: 32 out of 211. The distribution of quotas has remained the same since 2006: 13 for UEFA, 5 for Africa, 4.5 for Asia, 4, 5 for South America, 3.5 for CONCACAF and 0.5 for Oceania. They are joined by the host. For a few editions, the last champion (in this case France) must be classified like the rest.

Eliminated. Although confederations such as UEFA have not yet started on the road to the World Cup, there are already ten countries in Asia that are completely eliminated and have no mathematical option of being in Qatar. Bhutan was the first after losing to Guam 5-0 in June last year.

Last with 32. Qatar 2022 will be the last World Cup with 32 teams. From the next (USA, Mexico and Canada, in 2026) that number of participants increases to 48. It was debated whether to do it now from Qatar, but it was left as planned at first.

Eight stadiums. The Qatar Organizing Committee has planned eight stadiums for the World Cup event. Seven of them are newly built and the other, the historic Al Khalifa, has been remodeled. To date, five have been inaugurated, leaving three to go: Lusail, Ras Abu Aboud and Al Thumama.

Closeness. The World Cup in Qatar will be peculiar for many things, but above all because everything will be concentrated within a 50-kilometer radius. Any fan who wants can go to three games in the same day using the new metro network created and connecting all stadiums. In addition, you will not need to change hotels or cities as usual in the World Cups.

The jewel. The Lusail Stadium, scheduled for the end of this year, will be the great jewel in the World Cup crown. It will host the final of the tournament on December 18 next year and will have a capacity for 80,000 spectators. In addition to the enclosure itself, it will have a whole newly created city around it with all kinds of facilities. The opening game will be at Al Bayt.

Schedules. During the first phase of the World Cup, four matches a day will be played to win days off the calendar in that first leg of the championship. The hours in Spain will be 11:00, 14:00, 17:00 and 20:00. The opening match, therefore, will be played on a Monday morning at 11am and will host the Qatari national team on the pitch.

Hot. The transfer of the tournament on the calendar was motivated by the strong heat that it does in the Qatari country in summer. Temperatures of up to 50 degrees are recorded at that time. Despite the fact that all stadiums have an indoor air conditioning system, FIFA decided to take it away at the end of autumn. National leagues must have a break of more than one month.

Without Confederations. Precisely the heat and the problem in the calendar made the Confederations Cup dispute unfeasible a year before and as a rehearsal for the World Cup. FIFA canceled it. A changed his intention is to use next summer to test the new and expanded Club World Cup, albeit in another country. In Qatar, a tournament between Asian and African Arab countries, the Arab Cup, will be played this year in December.