FIFA, AFC Agree to Postpone Asian Qualifiers for World Cup Qatar 2022 Due to Coronavirus Outbreak in Asia

Zurich, March 9: The football's elite governing body FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) have agreed to postpone the upcoming Asian qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. The matches were originally scheduled to take place during the international window of March 23 to March 31 and June 1 to June 9, 2020, but now are postponed to later dates.

FIFA and the AFC will further discuss details of the postponed matches. FIFA and the AFC have also agreed to postpone the AFC Futsal Championship Turkmenistan 2020, which serves as the qualifiers for the FIFA Futsal World Cup Lithuania 2020, until August 5-15 2020.

However, the qualifiers for the Olympic Football Tournaments will go ahead as planned."The upcoming qualifiers for the Olympic Football Tournaments are foreseen to be played as scheduled, with the exception of the women's Olympic qualifiers play-off between Korea Republic and China PR, which will now take place during the international window of 1-10 June 2020," the FIFA said in a statement.

The FIFA further mentioned that Member Associations may still play the matches in March and June 2020 upon mutual agreement."In order to support the member associations concerned, and provided that the safety of all individuals involved meets the required standards and that the member associations due to play each other mutually agree, the match(es) may still be played during the international windows of March or June 2020, but always subject to prior approval from both FIFA and the AFC," the statement added.

FIFA and the AFC will continue to assess the situation in relation to COVID-19 and will decide whether further changes to the schedule of Asian FIFA World Cup 2022 qualifiers are required.

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