AFC announce proposed dates for upcoming Asian Qualifiers

Tehran Times – KUALA LUMPUR, The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), in consultation with FIFA, has announced the proposed match dates for the remaining matches of Round 2 in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asian Cup China 2023 Asian Qualifiers, which were originally scheduled to take place in March and June 2020.

Matchdays 7 and 8 are now scheduled to take place on October 8 and 13, 2020 respectively while Matchdays 9 and 10 are due to kick off on November 12 and 17, 2020.

The latest decision has been taken with a view to completing the Preliminary Joint Qualification Round 2 by November 2020 and to commence the subsequent FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Asian Qualifiers Final Round as well as the play-off matches for the AFC Asian Cup China 2023 Round 3 Qualifiers by the March 2021 match dates in the FIFA International Calendar.

The AFC will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all teams, officials, fans and stakeholders as well as Government travel and medical restrictions and will notify all parties should there be a need to reassess the match schedules due to the ever-evolving impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Iran will likely meet Hong Kong in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium on October 8 and play Cambodia five days later at the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh.

The Persian will also Bahrain and Iraq on November 12 and 17, respectively.