Jordan Qualify for WCQ Playoffs

Posted by coininfifa on April 21st, 2014

While five more teams punched their tickets for Brazil on Tuesday night, eight more teams moved themselves to within two games of playoff hell to the World’s Largest Party next summer. Here is Part 3 of our review from this week’s FIFA 14 PC Coins.

After a tense 1-1 draw at the King Abdullah Stadium on Friday, Uzbekistan and Jordan traveled east to Tashkent, where Tuesday’s second leg of the series to determine who would advance to November’s intercontinental playoff would take place.

Once again, 90 minutes of soccer would only produce a 1-1 result after Jordan’s Saeed Murjan scored near halftime to equalize after Anzur Ismalov had put the home side up after five minutes. The match headed to extra time, where an electricity outage, the second of the qualifying cycle behind the one in Columbia on Friday, plunged Markaziy Stadium into darkness after 102 minutes. That only furthered the drama, but at the end of the extra sessions, the match was still tied, and it went to a shootout. Three hours after the beginning of the match, a ten round shootout ended with Jordanian defender Mohammad Al-Dmeiri beating Uzbek keeper Murod Zukhurov to secure a 9-8 PK win.

The victory propels Al-Nashama into the playoff against the 5th placed team from CONMEBOL in November as they seek their first ever World Cup appearance. As drawn, the first leg of that match will be at the King Abdullah before the teams travel to South America a week later for the final match.

AFRICA — Second Round

Heading into the weekend, sixteen teams were still alive for the remaining seven spots in the final round playoff for the CAF’s five World Cup spots. In the five of the groups in dispute, the two remaining teams played each other head to head. In all five cases, the home team only needed to draw to advance. Four of the five home teams: Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Senegal (playing in a neutral site due to a FIFA ban), won their matches and qualified. The fifth team, Tunisia, was stunned at home in Rades, where Cape Verde scored a pair of first half goals in a 2-0 win.

The other two groups up for grabs had three teams still alive. In both cases, the team leading heading into the final match played the only team in their group that was eliminated on the road, while the 2nd and 3rd place teams played for a win to try and surge ahead in case the first place team lost. In Group E, that’s exactly what happened. When top-ranked Congo-Brazzaville could only salvage a 2-2 draw at last placed Niger, it was Prejuce Nakulma’s 54th minute goal that gave Burkina Faso a 1-0 win over Gabon and, amazingly, the right to move on. In Group A, however, there was no such drama. After giving up an early goal to the Central African Republic, Ethiopia hit back with two second half goals to win 2-1, winning the group and nullifying a brilliant 4-1 South African victory over Botswana.

Two of the three teams that had already secured qualification prior to the weekend’s games finished the round with wins. El Arbi Hillel Soudani’s 51st minute goal gave Algeria a 1-0 win over Mali, while Bob Bradley’s Egyptians became the only team of the forty 2nd round participants to win six games from six, getting two late goals in a 4-2 thriller against Guinea. Cote d’Ivoire scored a late penalty to salvage a 1-1 draw against Morocco.

The draw for the final round of matches will take place next Monday. The ten teams will be paired up into five ties, with the winners advancing to the World Cup. The series’ first legs will take place between October 11th and 15th, with the return legs to be played between the 15th and 19th of November. For more info, fans can visit FIFA 14 Coins PC