Path to 2018 World Cup: UAE’s opponents for next round of Asian qualifying to be revealed

Forty Asia sides still can progress and they have been divided into five pots. The UAE are in Pot 1 with the other seven nations highest-placed in the latest Fifa rankings, writes Paul Oberjurge.

UAE national team coach Mahdi Ali is preparing his side for a qualification run to the 2018 World Cup. The UAE’s only appearance at global football’s greatest event was at the World Cup in Italy in 19Show more

Mahdi Ali and his national team on Tuesday will learn the identity of the four sides who will attempt to keep them from progressing to the final round of Asian Football Confederation qualifying for the 2018 Fifa World Cup.

The draw for the eight groups in Round 2 will be made in Kuala Lumpur, beginning at 1pm local time.

Russia 2018 is the Fifa World Cup the Football Association has been aiming at since the emergence of the age-group side who qualified for the 2012 London Olympics and then became the heart of the senior team who won the 2013 Gulf Cup of Nations and placed third at the Asian Cup in January. That would be Omar Abdulrahman, Ali Mabkhout, Ahmed Khalil, et al.

RELATED

The UAE’s only appearance at global football’s greatest event was at the World Cup in Italy in 1990.

Forty Asia sides still can progress, after six nations were eliminated in the first round of qualifying, and they have been divided into five pots.

The UAE are in Pot 1 with the other seven nations highest-placed in the latest Fifa rankings. Also in Pot 1 are Iran, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Uzbekistan, China and Iraq.

How the remaining 32 teams are sorted will decide the size of the challenge the UAE will face and how much travel is involved in the eight-match, home-and-away group competition, which begins June 11 and continues until March 29 next year.

The winners of each group advance to the final round of qualifying, as do the four second-place sides with the best record. The final 12 will be divided into two groups of six, and the top two in each group will go to Russia. The third-place sides will have a chance to qualify for 2018 via intercontinental play-off.

Mahdi Ali, the veteran manager, would never indicate his group preferences, but it would seem that the most difficult group will be the one in which four-time World Cup finalist Saudi Arabia, from Pot 2, features.

Perhaps the most difficult opponents in Pots 3, 4 and 5 would be Palestine, North Korea and Yemen, respectively.

A less-strenuous path for the UAE through this round of qualifying might include Syria, Maldives, Singapore and Laos.

Travel across the sprawling AFC will be a consideration for Pot 1 sides, as well, both in distance and to the more exotic locales.

The Emiratis would accumulate tens of thousands of kilometres in travel if they got a group including Vietnam, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Guam.

All will be revealed on Tuesday.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE