Watch: AFC U23 Asian Cup Uzbekistan 2022 Qualifiers Draw

The Australia U23's will discover their opponents for the upcoming AFC U23 Asian Cup Uzbekistan 2022 Qualifiers on Friday, following a draw in Tashkent, Uzbekistan taking place 5pm AEST.

Watch live in the player below, or follow this link to tune in on YouTube!

With the anticipation building up, the stage is set for the 42 Member Associations who will be competing from October 23 to 31, 2021 for the 15 positions up for grabs to join host Uzbekistan ahead of the fifth edition of the AFC U23 Asian Cup in 2022, which will be staged in the Central Zone for the first time in Asian football history.

The draw will divide the teams into two Regions – the West Region comprising 23 West, South and Central Participating Teams as well as the East Region, which will consist of 19 East and ASEAN Participating Teams.

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 Australia has been confirmed as seed 3, jumping eight places following their third-place performance at the previous U23 Championship in 2020. 

The Qualifiers are set for 23 to 31 October 2021, and will be split into West (23 teams) and East (20 teams) zones. 

Australia will compete in the East zone, which is split into four groups of five nations. 

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The 11 group winners and four best second placed teams (total 15 teams) advance to AFC U23 Asian Cup 2022, which will be played in Uzbekistan between 1 to 19 June 2022. 

The West Region will comprise six groups in total – five groups of four teams and one group of three teams – while the East Region is set to feature four groups of four teams and one group of three teams, with the 11 group winners and four best second-placed teams sealing their qualification to the Finals.

The West Region hosts - Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates – as well as the East Region hosts – Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Mongolia and Singapore – will be placed in a host pot and be drawn into separate groups based on their positions in their ranking pot.

Teams have been seeded according to their ranking at the AFC U23 Championship Thailand 2020 and Pot 1 of the West Region will consist of two-time finalist Saudi Arabia, Syria, Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq while Oman, Palestine and Bangladesh will take their places in Pot 2.

Pot 3 of the West Region will contain Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, India, Lebanon and Yemen with the final pot comprising Kyrgyz Republic, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka as well as 2022 host Uzbekistan, whose matches will not be taken into account when calculating the group ranking and best positioned teams among all the groups.

Defending champions Korea Republic, Australia, DPR Korea, 2020 hosts Thailand  and 2018 finalist Vietnam will occupy Pot 1 in the East Region, with 2016 champions Japan, China PR, Malaysia and Myanmar taking their spots in Pot 2. Hong Kong, Laos, Cambodia and Timor-Leste will be placed in Pot 3 with Philippines and Brunei Darussalam completing the line-up of teams in the final East Region pot.

ausu23 qualify tokyo 2020
The Australia U23's finished in third place at the 2020 AFC U-23 Championship to ensure qualification for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Men's Football Tournament

 

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This article was originally published on the Socceroos website.
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