Hotly Anticipated European World Cup Qualifiers To Resume Shortly

The European 2022 World Cup qualifiers tournament will kick-off again today, September 1st, during FIFA’s first 2021 Autumn international window. The first leg of the competition, Matchdays 1 to 3 of 10, was played out during the Spring window in March and got the qualification ball rolling. Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, Croatia, England and Armenia all topped their groups at the end of the first three days. In the main, the standings were as predicted. However, notable omissions from the group top spots were the Netherlands, who were surprisingly whipped into second place by opponents Turkey, and Germany, who languish in third place after an unthinkably poor start to the competition. The upcoming window will see 75 games played out over Matchdays 4 to 6, taking the teams to over halfway through the first round of the competition. So, the next week (September 1st to the 8th) marks a significant step forward for all teams involved, as the standings, and the race to the World Cup qualifying spots, become more pronounced.

European Qualifier Format

All fifty-five members of the European football confederation (UEFA) signed up for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers. The 55 teams have been split into ten groups for the first round for the qualifying games (five groups of five and five groups of six). Each team will play all of the opposing teams within their group in a round-robin format of home and away matches. The top ten squads (one team per group) will advance directly to the FIFA 2022 World Cup Qatar. The ten group runners-up and the best two Nations League group winners* will head to a second-round, three group knockout tournament for a chance to win one of the final three slots from the available 13 allotted to European teams. 

To date, teams from each group have played two or three games each. During the September window, each group will complete the first leg of the round-robin of matches and begin the second, which will be completed during the October and November 2021 windows. 

While some teams have already positioned themselves as group leaders, others, whose tournament got off to a poor start in March, will need to fight fiercely to get back in the running for 2022.

Group Standings and Match Schedules

Don’t miss out on any of the upcoming action, check out the Standings and Match Schedules for each of the ten groups (A-J) below:

GROUP A

GROUP B

GROUP C

GROUP D

GROUP E

GROUP F

GROUP G

GROUP H

GROUP I

GROUP J