In the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, Asian teams will have a total of 8.5 places (8 teams will enter directly, one team will play a play-off match with a representative from another continent) to the final round. In the most recent World Cup qualifiers, Asia only had 4.5 places.
In theory, the number of tickets for Asia has almost doubled, but in reality, the opportunities for the underdogs are still not too great.
Coach Mano Polking believes that the chances of Thailand and other Southeast Asian teams entering the World Cup finals are not too great (Photo: Daily News).
Coach Mano Polking of the Thai team said: "The five giant teams in Asia including Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Australia will have five spots. The remaining teams will only compete for three spots."
"I think there will be about 10 teams fighting for these three spots, including us and teams of similar level. The pressure on each team is terrible," added coach Mano Polking.
Before the second qualifying round of the 2026 World Cup in Asia, at least four teams in Southeast Asia have publicly declared their goal of winning tickets to the World Cup finals in three years, including Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
These teams will compete with a series of opponents ranked higher than them in the FIFA rankings. These are teams such as Uzbekistan, China, Oman, Syria, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, UAE, Iraq.
Thailand team aims to participate in the 2026 World Cup (Photo: Daily News).
These teams, plus Southeast Asian teams, will form a group of more than 10 teams that will compete for the remaining 3.5 spots in Asia, as coach Mano Polking commented.
The coach, who has dual German and Brazilian citizenship, said: "Anyway, this race is very interesting. Before, when talking about the World Cup, we had almost no chance. But this time the opportunity has appeared, although it is quite fragile."
"First, the Thai team will compete with the Chinese team for the second place in Group C (this group also includes Korea and Singapore). This could be our most important match in the past 5-10 years, in the World Cup qualifiers," coach Mano Polking added.
According to the rules of the Asian World Cup qualifiers, the top two teams in each group (there are a total of 9 groups) in the second qualifying round will qualify for the third qualifying round. From the third qualifying round, teams in Asia will have the opportunity to qualify for the World Cup finals.
In Group C, because Korea is too strong and will likely be at the top of the group, it is true that Thailand and China will compete for second place. Meanwhile, Singapore is quite weak in this group, and will likely be at the bottom of the group.
Groups of the 2nd qualifying round of the 2026 World Cup in Asia (Photo: AFC).
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