World Cup 2022 qualifying draw concludes with Portugal discovering their opponents

Portugal were drawn into Group A of the latest FIFA World Cup qualifiers, and will have to get past Serbia if they want to automatically qualify for the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

As one of the the ten seeded sides for the draw, Portugal knew that they would avoid having to face the big-hitters of the continent, such as France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and England, but will still face a tough match against Serbia, a side they know well having now been drawn against them in three of the last four major tournament qualifying stages.

Portugal faced Serbia to qualify for Euro 2016, beating them home and away in two matches that proved fairly balanced, while for Euro 2020, they again had to face the Balkan nation, drawing 0-0 at home before securing a 2-4 win in Belgrade.

Also in Portugal’s group are the Republic of Ireland from pot 3, Luxembourg from pot 4 and Azerbaijan from pot 5.

A good draw for Portugal?

Overall, Portugal will have to consider themselves quite fortunate with how the draw panned out. Testament to that is the fact that none of their opponents even qualified for Euro 2020; compare this to England’s group, for example, who will have to take on two Euro 2020 nations in Poland and Hungary.

This is the case in several other group too. Indeed, Belgium will have to take on two Euro 2020 finalists in Wales and Czech Republic, as will Denmark (drawn alongside Austria and Scotland), France (drawn alongside Ukraine and Finland), the Netherlands (drawn with Turkey and Norway) and Croatia (handed clashes with Slovakia and Russia).

It means that over half the groups contain three sides that qualified for Euro 2020. Portugal’s, however, only has one - themselves. That in itself should give fans a great deal of additional confidence that Portugal should be able to secure a place on the plane to Qatar 2022.

Republic of Ireland from pot 3 should also be considered a very good draw for Portugal, with Ireland a side in dire form, failing to score in any of their last 7 matches - while they haven’t won a competitive match since beating Gibraltar in June 2019, now a year and a half ago. Considering the likes of Russia, Norway, Hungary and Iceland were in pot 3, to get an out-of-sorts Ireland is a positive outcome for Portugal.

Luxembourg, though a nation that always has the possibility of causing big sides problems, as seen when they clashed with Portugal in the Euro 2020 qualifiers, should also be seen as a relatively favourable draw. They have more often than not been a pot 5 team in the past, but made it into pot 4 as the lowest ranked nation this time around, in the same seeding group as the likes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro and Bulgaria. Portugal therefore can’t have any complaints with being grouped with Luxembourg.

You could say that Azerbaijan from pot 5 is far from ideal though. Undoubtedly a side Portugal should be beating, though it does come with massive distance of travel, Portugal located 4,700km away from the Eastern European outfit. Only Kazakhstan and Georgia would have come with a longer trip for Portugal than Azerbaijan.