The AFC has 43 member countries. According to the reformed rules of Asian preliminaries, the competition is divided into three stages. The last six teams qualified first according to the home and away game system, and the winning three teams entered the top 40 together with the other 37 teams. In the second stage, 40 teams were divided into 8 groups, with 5 teams in each group, each group was the first, and the four best teams were the second. *** 12 teams enter the third stage 12, and then decide the number of participants in the world cup.
China will directly enter the top 40, with the minimum goal of reaching the top 12. The question now is whether China can enter the top 40 as a seed team. At present, China ranks ninth in Asia, behind Japan, Iran, South Korea, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Oman and Qatar, while China is followed by three traditional strong teams: Australia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. If China can make it to the top 8 in Asia in March next year, it can avoid many strong teams in the group stage. If not, enter the second stage of the group. At least one team in the group is better than the opponent, so it is almost impossible to qualify for the first place. Whether you can enter the second place in the semi-finals depends on the faces of other teams.