Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Kuala Lumpur: The draw for the AFC Futsal Championship Uzbekistan 2016 Qualifiers was concluded at AFC House in the Malaysian capital city on Wednesday.
Some 22 Member Associations were divided into four zones -- West, Central, ASEAN and East. There are no teams participating from the South zone, while the ASEAN qualifiers will be played in Thailand and were not included during the draw. The top four teams from the ASEAN zone qualifiers will qualify for the finals.
In the West zone, seven teams were drawn into two groups of four and three teams respectively. The matches will be held in Malaysia from October 1 to 3, 2015.
WEST ZONE (top two teams from each group will qualify for the finals)
Group A: Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan
Group B: Iraq, Qatar, UAE
CENTRAL ZONE (top two teams will qualify for the finals)
There are only four teams in the Central zone, so a draw was not required. The matches in this zone will be held from November 14 to 16, 2015.
Group A: Tajikistan (hosts), Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan
EAST ZONE (top two teams will qualify for the finals)
In the East zone, there are only five teams participating, so again there was no draw. This zone’s matches will be played from November 14 to 19.
Group A: Mongolia (hosts), Chinese Taipei, China, Korea Republic, Hong Kong
Japan, Iran and Uzbekistan were given automatic qualification to the final-round competition as the top three ranked teams in the AFC Futsal Championship Vietnam 2014 ranking. However, since Uzbekistan are hosting the finals, the next best ranked team, Kuwait, automatically qualified. Hosts Uzbekistan are also given automatic qualification to the finals.
The following zones were allocated two additional slots respectively based on the technical standard team ranking from fourth to seventh placing in the AFC Futsal Championship Vietnam 2014.
West Zone: Two slots (Ranked 4th and 7th)
ASEAN Zone: Two slots (Ranked 5th & 6th)
The seeding for the draw was also based on the 2014 edition's rankings while new entrants -- Afghanistan, Bahrain, Jordan, Mongolia and the UAE – were unranked.
Indonesia have been removed from the seeding table following their suspension by FIFA, while Palestine have withdrawn from the qualifiers.
A total of 16 teams will play in the finals.
The full list of teams vying for AFC Futsal Championship Uzbekistan 2016 glory is: Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Korea Republic, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.