Qualifiers

FIFA World Cup 2018 qualifiers include a couple of hundreds of countries participating over six confederations. After hundreds of matches, 32 teams were selected to participate in the tournament itself in Russia this summer.

While the qualifiers are over, they provide some invaluable information on the squads and their recent performance. This is useful to know not only so that you could be a knowledgeable football fan.

Qualifiers Africa
Qualifiers South America

This is useful because you can then place informed bets when gambling on World Cup matches in the groups and the knockout phase. So, let’s take a look back and see how the road to Russia looked for different teams.

World Cup Qualifiers Groups

Each confederation had a different system of qualification with many groups and many rounds involved. The more teams, the most rounds were done and the more matches played.

The European and African confederations had the most teams. CAF, for example, arranged three rounds and there we 20 teams playing in the last one, including five groups of four teams.

The South African CONMEBOL had only ten teams, so they included only one round and one group where all the teams played with one another two times, eliminating half the countries as a result.

CONCACAF had five rounds in total, and only three most successful teams left in the end: Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama.

World Cup Qualifiers Standings

In the last round of AFC, two groups and 12 teams were left, the most successful of which were:

• Iran (6 out of 10 won, 22 pt.)
• Japan (6 won, 20 pt.)
• Saudi Arabia (6 won, 19 pt.)
• Australia (5 won, 19 pt.)
• South Korea (4 won, 15 pt.)
• Syria (3 won, 13 pt.)

The latter dropped out by losing to Australia in the final play-off. In CAF, only the winner of each of five final groups advanced, which included:

• Tunisia (4 out of 6 won, 14 pt.)
• Nigeria (4 won, 13 pt.)
• Morocco (3 won, 12 pt.)
• Senegal (4 won, 14 pt.)
• Egypt (4 won, 13 pt.)

In CONMEBOL, there was only one group and the four first places advanced straight to the tournament, which are:

• Brazil (12 of 18 won, 41 pt.)
• Uruguay (9 won, 31 pt.)
• Argentina (7 won, 28 pt.)
• Colombia (7 won, 27 pt.)

The fifth team advanced to a further play-off and that was Peru, which pushed out Chile only by goal difference with 26 points.

World Cup Qualifiers 2018 Europe

In Europe, there were two rounds and the first one included nine groups of six teams each. The winners of these groups qualified automatically:

• France (7 out of 10 won, 23 pt.)
• Portugal (9 won, 27 pt.)
• Germany (10 won, 30 pt.)
• Serbia (6 won, 21 pt.)
• Poland (8 won, 25 pt.)
• England (8 won, 26 pt.)
• Spain (9 won, 28 pt.)
• Belgium (9 won, 28 pt.)
• Iceland (7 won, 22 pt.)

The runners-off of these groups advanced to the second round to play against each other with the winners advancing to the World Cup as well. This way Switzerland, Croatia, Denmark and Sweden joined the World Cup.