Asian Zone World Cup Qualifiers for the third round will begin early next month and we will see quite lot of matches categorized into 3 group, each group filled by 6 countries.
In this third round, it can also be said to be determinant for which countries are able to qualify to enter and participate in the real competition later in 2026, besides that in the third round we can see meeting between the team that are indeed the strongest for the Asian zone.
Here, what is quite easy to compete is group C, we can see that group C is filled by team that can be said to be not strong teams for Asia overall, maybe only Japan is the strongest team here and they are the favorites for group C.
In Asia, usually, we have some teams that will always get themself to the World Cup while some other items never saw themselves playing in this tournament this can make the Asian Zone World Cup Qualifiers a little bit predictable for everyone. For example, some teams like Australia, Japan, and South Korea or other teams like Iran are usually in the World Cup however they usually cannot have good performance in the World Cup because of the much stronger teas in this tournament. That's why I think this group Japan and Australia are going to be the first two teams in this group.
Yes, that what happened so far, but honestly for all the teams in Group C I believe there will be big surprise presented, the only strongest in my opinion is Japan which is also the leader of the 1st rank for the Asian ranking.
It just that in phase like this maybe we can see more decisive matches later to see who is worthy of being able to enter the real competition.
There is one team in this group that I want to be able to show big surprise and that is Indonesia, they now have more naturalized players and that can help significantly.
Here, what is quite easy to compete is group C, we can see that group C is filled by team that can be said to be not strong teams for Asia overall, maybe only Japan is the strongest team here and they are the favorites for group C.
Group C is the most difficult group.
Half of the teams that qualified for the 2022 world cup from Asia will compete in group C.
You can't underestimate Australia and Saudi Arabia.
In 2022 world cup, Australia defeated Tunisia and Denmark and qulified for the round of 16. In round of 16, they lost to Argentina (the winner of the tournament) 2-1.
And Saudi Arabia was the only team that could defeat Argentina.
For the 2022 World Cup, what you said is absolutely right, but there will always be unexpected surprises that can happen in the future so being too sure of the assessment based on the previous edition is also not right.
I know that Saudi Arabia is also strong team, but look at it now and try to judge from the performance of each team then you will find difference in the competition for the group phase later.