The draw has been made for the Cymru’s Women World Cup Qualifiers, which also acts as the Nations League B fixtures. Cymru were drawn in Nations League B, Group 1.
That’s where the straightforward stuff ends. Welcome to the complicated world of qualifying for the Women’s World Cup!
Group B1
Cymru (32nd in the world)
Czechia (31st)
Albania (72nd)
Montenegro (85th)
In a normal world, Cymru would win the group and would qualify for the World Cup. But we must remember that this is FIFA’s world. And they like their qualifying done in a way that means you need to be a NASA scientist to understand. I will try to explain, after an hour of research I think I may have worked it out. Stick with me!
If Cymru wins the group they will go into the playoffs; along with the fourth placed League A teams and the other League B winners. Those eight teams would be seeded. This gives the advantage of playing the second leg at home, where they’d be against the second or third placed League B countries.
So, there’s a playoff place for all the League B teams who finish first, second or third. The seeding makes it advantageous to top the league though.
On the other side of the draw, the second and third placed League A countries are pitted against League C teams (the C winners and the 2 best ranked runners up of League C) for another eight Round 1 playoffs matches. UEFA are calling this route Path 1.
Still following?
For the sixteen winners, it’s on to Playoffs Round 2. The Path 1 teams are drawn against the Path 2 (Cymru’s route) winners The seeding there favours the Path 1 group, so Cymru would not get a seeded spot in that round.
For the winners of these eight Round 2 games, the seven best ranked (league position) teams go to the World Cup. For the eighth team there’s another two-leg match in the Inter-Confederation Playoff in February 2027.
You read that right, three rounds of playoffs potentially. And given any League B winner is always going to lower on league ranking than a League A team, this looks likely as Cymru’s route.
Simple, right? (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
Before we have to worry about all that, Nations League B, Group 1 matches need to be played.
Embed from Getty ImagesCzechia, who are one place above Cymru in the current rankings (with new rankings out on 11th December) will likely be our main rivals for first place in the group. We have played them 5 times, back when they were referred to as the Czech Republic.
Cymru 2-0 Czech Republic 23/09/09
Czech Rep. 2-1 Cymru 25/10/09
Czech Rep. 1-0 Cymru 07/03/16
Cymru 0-0 Czech Rep. 03/03/17
Cymru 0-0 Czech Rep. 04/04/19
These will be two tough matches that could go either way.
Albania, a country that we have never played, or at least not that I could find, Women’s football records/information is improving but is nowhere near the level of the men’s game.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe fourth and final country in our group is Montenegro. Looking through the records, it looks like we have played them twice, both matches in the 2015 World Cup qualifiers.
Montenegro 0-3 Cymru 23/11/13
Cymru 4-0 Montenegro 08/05/14
A double from Helen Ward in the first match and a hat-trick from Jess Fishlock (who else?) in the return fixture.
You can see we do not have much of a past record against the three teams to give us an idea of how it will go. And we haven’t faced any of them in more than 6 years. But going by current rankings, we should win (fingers crossed) the four matches against Albania & Montenegro. The tough games will be against Czechia. It’s important that we fill the stadium for all these matches, especially against Czechia and hopefully we will have the reward of being confused by the playoffs!
Thanks to @StephenJBaker for explaining this!