The World Cup in Qatar already has two new qualifiers: Japan, who beat Australia 2-0 as a visitor, and Saudi Arabia, who without playing their match this Thursday against China, secured their ticket due to the defeat of the oceanic. In this way, the four Asian representatives are already defined, to which the host Qatar will be added and, eventually, one more team through the playoffs.
The victory of the Japanese in the Sydney Stadium deposited them directly in Qatar and relegated Australia to seek their place through a playoff. The Japanese lead the area with 21 points, two more than the Saudis who play later against China. Australia, meanwhile, was in third position with 15 units, when only one day remains. For this reason, the Australians have already been condemned to play a match against the third in zone A -possibly the United Arab Emirates or Iraq- to define the team that will play the playoff against the fifth in South America for the last ticket to the World Cup.
Japan got their passage thanks to the goals scored by midfielder Kaoru Mitoma, a player for Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, from Belgium, who came on at 89 minutes for Takumi Minamino and became the hero with his goals at 90 and 94. Japan were clearly dominating against an Australian team without ideas and if it wasn’t for Minamino’s poor performance in the definition, they could have finished it earlier.
The Japanese thus reached their seventh consecutive classification for a World Cup, since France 1998, when they shared the group with Argentina and lost against the team led by Daniel Passarella by 1-0, in the city of Toulouse, with a goal scored by Gabriel Batistuta. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it will be their sixth participation in a World Cup with the precedent that they were also in Russia 2018. For their part, in Group A of the Asian Qualifiers they had already qualified for the World Cup Iran and South Korea South.
The 17 qualified for Qatar
With the classification of Japan and Saudi Arabia, there are now 17 countries that obtained their direct tickets for the World Cup according to the following detail:
Europe (10): Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland.
South America (2): Argentina and Brazil.
Asian (5): Qatar (host), Iran, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
To complete the classifieds, 15 places remain to be defined, of which 12 will be known this week: two from South America, three from Concacaf, two from Europe and five from Africa. The rest of Europe and the South America-Asia and Concacaf-Oceania playoffs will be defined after the group draw scheduled for April 1.