North Korea is expected to make an appearance again at the FIFA World Cup, the world’s largest single sports event.
Free Asia Broadcasting (RFA) reported on the 9th that the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) announced that North Korea would participate in the second Asian qualifier for the 2026 World Cup. AFC said, “FIFA and AFC have received North Korea’s intention to participate in the Asian qualifiers.”메이저사이트
If North Korea goes to the qualifiers, it will return to the World Cup stage for the first time in about four years since November 2019. At the time, North Korea participated in the second Asian qualifier to advance to the 2022 Qatar World Cup finals and played against South Korea, but withdrew due to the 2020 Corona 19 epidemic.
In the second Asian qualifier for the 2026 World Cup finals in North and Central America, co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, groups were organized according to FIFA rankings, and North Korea is in Group B. In addition to Japan and Syria, the winners of the first qualifying round between Myanmar and Macau are included in this group.
If you participate in the qualifiers, you will also have to play a visit to the opponent’s country, so you are interested in whether North Korea, which is still blocking the border with Corona 19, will open its doors or accept foreign teams.
North Korea’s first match on the Group B schedule will be a home game against Syria on November 16th. If North Korea actually participates, it will be a worthy opponent to compete for the second place in the group to advance to the Asian final qualifiers after Japan.
In this World Cup, as the number of countries participating in the finals increased from 32 to 48, the ticket to the finals allocated to Asia also increased from 4.5 to 8.5, so the possibility of the North Korean national soccer team stepping on American soil also increased.
On the other hand, North Korea received a disciplinary suspension from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for not participating in the Olympics without permission, and there were observations that a similar punishment would be applied to the World Cup, but the AFC said there was no disciplinary action imposed on North Korea in connection with participating in the 2026 World Cup.