Asia’s football governing body the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has deferred the schedules of the FIFA World Cup 2022 and the Asia Cup joint qualifying matches for October and November, which were earlier scheduled for March and June this year.
AFC, in consultation with the world football’s governing body FIFA, announced on Friday the proposed match dates for the remaining matches of Round 2 in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and the AFC Asian Cup China 2023 Asian Qualifiers, which were originally scheduled to take place in March and June.
Match Days 7 and 8 are now scheduled to take place on October 8 and 13, 2020 respectively, while Match Days 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 the 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. The Independent
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