AFC guaranteed six direct slots for 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

Members from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will have six direct slots for the 32-team 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup which will be held in Australia and New Zealand.

World football governing body FIFA has revealed the plan for the allocation of slots for the tournament, reports Xinhua news agency.

UEFA (Europe) will get the largest share of the total 29 direct slots with 11, while CAF (Africa) and CONCACAF (North, Central American and Caribbean) both have four, followed by CONMEBOL (South America) with three and OFC (Oceania) one.

The two host countries, Australia and New Zealand will automatically qualify, and their slots have been taken directly from the quotas allocated to their confederations, namely the AFC and the OFC respectively.

Thus, China will compete with other Asian teams for the remaining five direct tickets to the event.

The remaining three slots will be decided through a 10-team play-off tournament with the following slot allocation: AFC (2), CAF (2), CONCACAF (2), CONMEBOL (2) OFC (1), and UEFA (1).

The play-off tournament will be used as a test event in Australia and New Zealand for the World Cup, and both hosts will be invited to participate in friendly matches against some of the participating teams.

The Bureau of the FIFA Council on Thursday also decided to cancel the 2021 editions of the men's FIFA U-20 World Cup and FIFA U-17 World Cup due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indonesia and Peru, who were respectively due to host the two tournaments in 2021, were appointed as the hosts of the 2023 editions.

--IANS

aak/