Board 8 > Soccer/Football Association Topic 2025-2026: Road To World Cup

(+) Yeah! (+)

A lot has happened through the March, June and September international windows.

Now, with the October international window, the earliest of matches start October 8th.

The Confederations that are in contention this month are as follows:

AFC: Round 4
CAF: Round 1 Part 5/5
CONCACAF: Round 3 Part 2/3
UEFA: Round 1...
Groups A - F Part 2/3
Groups G - L Part 4/5

The main focus is AFC and CAF, and the total number of direct slots to be allocated this month are:

AFC+2
CAF+7

There is the possibility of seeing nations qualify from UEFA or maybe even a slim chance from CONCACAF this month too.

So in summary, it's 9 or more nations qualifying this month, and the list so far is:

2026 World Cup Qualified Nations [18]

AFC [6]
Round 3 Group A 1st: Iran
Round 3 Group A 2nd: Uzbekistan
Round 3 Group B 1st: South Korea
Round 3 Group B 2nd: Jordan
Round 3 Group C 1st: Japan
Round 3 Group C 2nd: Australia

CAF [2]
Round 1 Group E: Morocco
Round 1 Group H: Tunisia

CONCACAF [3]
Co-Host: Canada
Co-Host: Mexico
Co-Host: United States

CONMEBOL [6]
Main Round 1st: Argentina
Main Round 2nd: Ecuador
Main Round 3rd: Colombia
Main Round 4th: Uruguay
Main Round 5th: Brazil
Main Round 6th: Paraguay

OFC [1]
Round 3 Final: New Zealand

UEFA [0]
--None Yet--

Also, let's not forget about the other component of the World Cup Qualifying:

March 2026 Interconfederation Playoff Slots [2/6]
AFC[0]: --None Yet--
CAF[0]: --None Yet--
CONCACAF[0]: --None Yet--
CONMEBOL[1]: Bolivia
OFC[1]: New Caledonia

I'm pulling for Madagascar and Cape Verde Islands

Cape Verde has a real good chance at qualifying.

Kinda sucks Cape Verde are the likely only shock from Africa. Would like to see Benin rob South Africa and Nigeria of a spot but they have 2 away games and must outscore South Africa to guarantee top spot.

I checked the score on ESPN.

It shows that Libya leads Cape Verde 2-1 at half time.

Checking the score again:

Libya and Cape Verde is tied 3-3 at 88 minutes!

Would Cape Verde be the first of the tiny island chain nations to make a world cup? I can't think of any others.

Yeah, definitely the first, countries of that size almost never qualify and a lot of them were late to join FIFA or had their best players taken by bigger nations. Think only Iceland are roughly comparable in size.

Qatar and Oman play to a 0-0 draw.

It's really interesting to me that this thread gets a lot more active in the international break. I guess it's a symptom of B8's age group not being too social-media obsessed, and more US people being present. Pretty much anywhere else I go online to talk about football is far more active outside of the international window.

Sheep007 posted...

It's really interesting to me that this thread gets a lot more active in the international break. I guess it's a symptom of B8's age group not being too social-media obsessed, and more US people being present. Pretty much anywhere else I go online to talk about football is far more active outside of the international window.

Yeah maybe I'm wrong but country vs country is interesting for Americans plus the world cup is there

Nations qualified so far this October international window:

CAF: Egypt from Group A

Dark_Silvergun posted...

There is the possibility of seeing nations qualify from UEFA ...

Almost a guarantee one or two (maybe three) nations qualifying from UEFA this upcoming week. Spain and Portugal play two home games and winning them both could be enough to put them through especially if other results in their respective groups go their way. Norway could secure their spot should they beat Israel and Italy slips up in onwe of their games. If England win against Latvia, then Serbia would need to win every remaining game and hope Albania gets a result against England in November.

paulg235 posted...

Almost a guarantee one or two (maybe three) nations qualifying from UEFA this upcoming week. Spain and Portugal play two home games and winning them both could be enough to put them through especially if other results in their respective groups go their way. Norway could secure their spot should they beat Israel and Italy slips up in onwe of their games. If England win against Latvia, then Serbia would need to win every remaining game and hope Albania gets a result against England in November.

The next few days are going to be very interesting.

Also, Algeria is through after defeating Somalia 3-0 today.

I think Portugal are the most likely to get over the line. They only have to win both games and hope Armenia drop points which is pretty much a certainty. England is pretty much a 50/50 seeing as the Albana vs Serbia game is a toss up.

shane15 posted...

It's funny how Qatar and Saudi Arabia are still comfortably in control of qualifying despite both being pretty bad. Then you look at how CAF have set up their qualifiers and how some of the big teams are struggling because of the format. Should've stuck to a similar format to before instead of having the Afcon and WCQs be seperate. That being said i think Africa should've probably been given 10 spots and Asia only 7.

The setup of the current round of the AFC is beyond complete BS.

Benin are potentially a point away from the world cup

shane15 posted...

Benin are potentially a point away from the world cup

Let's see, Group C has:
Benin 17 PTS, +5GD
South Africa 15 PTS, +3GD
Nigeria 14 PTS, +3GD

Rwanda, Lesotho & Zimbabwe are eliminated.

It's going to be a tight finish!

Belgium are in big trouble now. Lose to Wales on Monday and Wales and North Macedonia will both have qualification in their own hands. They play each other on the final match day.

In CONCACAF, after Game 3, Group B has Curacao in the lead at 7 points ahead of Jamaica who has 6 points, and Group C has Haiti holding the top spot at 5 points.

Group A still has El Salvador and Panama playing right now, with Suriname and Guatemala drawing 1-1 today.

I'm curious about the AFC, as matchday 2 tomorrow has U.A.E. vs. Oman in Group A and Iraq vs. Indonesia from Group B.

Norway rolls to 5-0 win over Israel, so Norway has all 18 points after 6 matches. Italy is now very much in a must win game 6, as that will only put them to 15, sitting currently at 12.

Italy missed both the 2018 & 2022 World Cups, so it will be interesting to see if they stay in, or get eliminated again.

United Arab Emirates gets the win over Oman, and Iraq takes down Indonesia.

Matchday 3 is on the 14th.

Group A
United Arab Emirates 3 PTS +1 GD
Qatar 1 PT +0 GD
Oman 1 PT -1 GD

Group B
Saudi Arabia 3 PTS +1 GD
Iraq 3 PTS +1 GD
Indonesia 0 PT -2 GD

Norway has like a 99% chance of winning that group. They have Estonia at home and a goal difference Italy isn't catching up to even if they smash Norway.

At this point there is a bigger chance Italy finishes third than first, though that probably doesn't happen either.

If Italy come 2nd they'll get a chance in the playoffs.and since they are top 10 in the FIFA rankings they'll probably get a decent draw. Not that that's stopped them screwing it up in the past - they lost to Macedonia in the playoffs last time.

Italy will go in pot 1 and Romania are in pot 4. Those are pretty much the only near guarantees at the moment. The rest still have too much random stuff that can happen.

These are the likely countries Italy could face in that first leg:

Romania
Wales/N Macedonia
Sweden
N Ireland/Moldova

Sweden was the country they lost the playoff to in 2018.

They also lost to North Macedonia in the 2022 play off. Also worth noting Northern Ireland held them to a draw on the final match day of that qualifying cycle to send them to that play off.

Ghana has very little to do to qualify today, since they are 3 points ahead of Madagascar [22 vs. 19], and have a major goal differential advantage in the event that Ghana [+16 GD] loses and Madagascar [+8 GD] wins today.

And if Italy falls again, that means Italy will increase it's World Cup drought to a minimum of 16 years. Qualifying for this edition will mitigate that span of time to 12 years.

The 4 year cycles [or in the case of Qatar 2022 to United 2026, it's actually 3 years 7 months due to the 2022 November+December shift.] are a lot to endure, because even missing one World Cup throws a nation into a 8 year minimum of returning. Even with USA, missing Russia 2018 made a gap of Brazil 2014 to Qatar 2022.

Not played a World Cup knockout game since 2006, not qualified for 12 years and yet they've still managed to win a Euros in that time. Meanwhile England once again have another squad of incredible players and i'm still waiting to see them lift a trophy. I fear we're gonna be like that Holland team of the 70's. Two finals in a row and then fading away.

Ghana wins and Madagascar loses.

Ghana therefore qualifies, and the result for Madagascar is not enough for them to advance to the second round.

The withdrawl of Eritrea causes results against 6th ranked nations in each group to not count towards the overall ranking of second place finishers in each group.

Yeah, that was the only fair solution.

I know it is unlikely won't matter, but Faroe Islands winning against Czechia is a top result, so was smashing Montenegro some days ago. Only like 50K live there.

Good to see national teams such as Faroe Islands punching above their weight.

Czech's shock loss against them all but confirms Croatia's qualification. Greece's loss today against Denamark eliminates them from qualifying altogether, meaning one of Scotland or Denmark will still have the play-offs should they fail to top the group. The Netherlands should qualify automatically in their group with Poland taking the play-off spot.

Tomorrow could see one or both of Switzerland and France become the first UEFA teams to officially qualify. The day after could see Portugal and England officially qualify themselves.

Also, Austria's loss to Romania shakes things up a bit!

Tomorrow, can Cape Verde close up qualification? All they need is a win against Eswatini tomorrow to secure qualification.

So, the qualification list for October 2025 so far is:

CAF[+3] = Egypt, Algeria, Ghana

This Nations League winners format is terrible.

If Romania beat Bosnia on the second to last match day, then on the final match day it would be in San Marino's interest to lost to Romania by as many goals as possible.

The Nations League should have no impact whatsoever on the World Cup qualifying cycle. If you want a ticket to the biggest show on the planet you earn it by winning your group or finishing second and winning the play off. If you want the Nations League to have an impact then save it for the Euros.

It's not like I don't agree, but it could definitely still be done better.

I kind of hope this scenario happens just so the system gets exposed fully.

Cape Verde finishes out qualification with a 3-0 win over Eswatini, and qualifies for the World Cup.

Starting to look very likely that Italy is the only group seed that fails to win their group in UEFA.

The San Marino play off dream is all but dead now.

Another loss. The swedish team have 1 point after four matches. Never have it been this bad, and its hard to be surprised. Hopefully they will kick out our coach and never ever hire a dane again. Its good that they look outside of Sweden for a coach, but it was obvious from the start that someone from our neighbour country wouldnt make things better. At least we can laugh at it.

Hey at least Sweden has a play off in the bag. It's looking like these will be the countries they could draw.

Italy
Turkey
Ukraine
Poland/Czech (very close together in the rankings)

shane15 posted...

The San Marino play off dream is all but dead now.

I don't think Slovakia finishing below Northern Ireland is that unlikely.

Zylothewolf posted...

Another loss. The swedish team have 1 point after four matches. Never have it been this bad, and its hard to be surprised. Hopefully they will kick out our coach and never ever hire a dane again. Its good that they look outside of Sweden for a coach, but it was obvious from the start that someone from our neighbour country wouldnt make things better. At least we can laugh at it.

I don't really want to defend JDT specifically, but no it was not obvious and him being a Dane doesn't matter at all.

You never had a foreign coach before and choosing someone who had just led Malm to two league titles in his two seasons there and led them to CL as well made plenty of sense at the time. It's not like you were much better before either, having missed the previous Euros and WC. Finally, a lot of this failure of a WC campaign has been due to personal errors which I'm not sure what a coach can do about. Like, what's he supposed to do when Bergwell can't hit water falling from a boat. Yes, he probably needs to go now but this is revisionism.

They need two of Romania, Sweden and Northern Ireland to finish in the top two. Sweden need a near miracle but looking at the other two there's an outside chance.

In CONCACAF, Group C, Honduras wins, and Costa might actually get their first win, maybe?

Costa Rica currently has 3 straight draws.

shane15 posted...

They need two of Romania, Sweden and Northern Ireland to finish in the top two. Sweden need a near miracle but looking at the other two there's an outside chance.

Well yeah, but Romania is the team they can forfeit to themselves. I know there is another match, but that was also the case before yesterday.

CAF: Benin might be in a bit of trouble.

At the moment, I see that Nigeria leads Benin, and South Africa leads Rwanda.

Qatar vs. United Arab Emirates is about a half hour from now.