The Asian qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup will be held in four rounds. For the national football team that reached the 12 for two consecutive times, but failed to get at least the third place in the group, although the number of qualifying places in the World Cup has increased, the national football team is still far from the World Cup.
Judging from the current world rankings, the national football team will definitely play from the second stage. Then, we will follow this route.
There are 9 teams in the second-stage qualifiers, with 4 teams in each group. Traditionally, the draw is based on FIFA's ranking. Therefore, for the national football team, it is very important to strive for FIFA's top nine rankings in Asia before the group draw. This way, the national football team can be assigned to the first gear. Even if the second file draws a slightly stronger opponent, the last 50% chance of qualifying will still give the national football team a great chance of promotion. If you fall in the second gear, once the third gear team is slightly stronger, it will increase the difficulty of the national football qualifying.
At the end of June, FIFA announced the latest national men's soccer rankings. The national football rankings fell out of the top ten in Asia, ranking 78th in the world and 1 1 in Asia. Last ranking, the national football team ranked 77th in the world, with Asia 10. In July, the national football team played in the East Asian Cup, and the draw with Japan and the defeat with China and Hongkong will make the world ranking of the national football team have room for improvement-China lost to the South Korean team by 2.99 points, and the draw with Japan scored 2.25 technical points, with a total loss of 0.74 points; If the national football team beats China and Hongkong, it can get three multi-technical points in the FIFA ranking, so it is expected that the national football team will return to the top ten in Asia.
Since the national football team will not participate in the FIFA match day in September, the team's next official appearance will probably wait until March next year. However, after the relocation of the Asian Cup in 2023, the national football team lost its host advantage, and it was difficult to become a seed team through group lottery, which undoubtedly increased the difficulty for the national football team to compete in the Asian Cup, thus facing greater challenges in winning the FIFA ranking.
How to build a good national team is bound to become the most important task of China Football Association in the coming year. If the national football team can successfully enter the third-stage qualifiers, it will be the final 18 competition-the competition system is actually the same as the 12 competition, except for one more group. Judging from the qualifying rules, the top two teams in the group advance directly, and it is very difficult for the national football team to win the top two. However, under the new competition system, not only the third place in the group stage can play the play-offs, but also the fourth place in the group stage can get the opportunity to play the play-offs.
For the national football team, it is an ideal route to qualify for the World Cup to win the fourth place in the group and strive for two direct qualifying places in the play-offs.