Group B was drawn with Qatar, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan in the group draw.
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Young-ho = The Olympic soccer team, led by head coach Hwang Seon-hong, will compete against Qatar, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan in the qualifiers for the 2024 Qatar Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-23 Asian Cup scheduled for September.
The Asian Football Confederation held the draw for the ‘2024 Qatar AFC U-23 Asian Cup Qualifier’ at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 25th.
As a result of the group draw, Korea was included in Group B along with Qatar, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan.
This tournament is a qualifier for the 2024 AFC U-23 Asian Cup to be held in Qatar from April 15 to May 3 next year.
A total of 43 teams are participating, four teams each from Groups A to J, and three teams from Group K.
A total of 16 teams, including 11 first-place teams in each group, top four second-place teams in each group, and host country Qatar, will advance to the finals.
Qatar, the host country of the 2024 AFC U-23 Asian Cup, has an automatic berth in the finals, but they are in Group B with Korea for the preliminary round.
As a result, all matches against Qatar are considered friendly matches and do not affect the match results and rankings, so Korea can advance to the finals by beating only Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan.
The 2024 AFC U-23 Asian Cup final stage also serves as the 2024 Paris Olympics men’s soccer qualifier.
The 1st to 3rd place teams in this competition will advance to the Olympic finals, and the 4th place team will have to play an intercontinental playoff (PO) with the 4th place team in the African qualifiers for the right to participate in the Olympics.
As U-23 players under the age of 23 participate in the Paris Olympics, only U-22 players must participate in the AFC U-23 Asian Cup qualifiers.
The AFC U-23 Asian Cup qualifier Group B matches will be played in Korea between September 4 and 12.The venue is likely to be Changwon, and the detailed match date has not yet been confirmed.
As U-22 players participate in the AFC U-23 Asian Cup qualifiers, head coach Hwang Seon-hong plans to lead the tournament and lead the U-24 national team to the Hangzhou Asian Games.