{"id":1249,"date":"2025-11-16T11:22:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T11:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2025-11-16T11:22:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T11:22:20","slug":"world-cup-qualifying-wales-permutations-for-2026-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=1249","title":{"rendered":"World Cup qualifying: Wales&#8217; permutations for 2026 tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With a full round of matches to play, the identity of potential play-off opponents is still up in the air.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Apart from the Nations League group winners who are automatically in pot four of the play-offs, the remaining pots are decided by the Fifa rankings and confirmed after this week&#8217;s final fixtures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sweden, Northern Ireland and Romania are all certain to be in pot four, with either Wales or North Macedonia joining them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They will face a top seed away from home &#8211; and as it stands, it looks likely that could be Italy, Turkey, Ukraine or Poland. Denmark would be a top-seeded team if Scotland beat them to automatic qualification from Group C.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If Wales fail to beat North Macedonia, it would require a win away at one of those nations to progress to a play-off final and keep their World Cup hopes alive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With a full round of matches to play, the identity of potential play-off opponents is still up in the air. Apart from the Nations League group winners who are automatically in pot four of the play-offs, the remaining pots are decided by the Fifa rankings and confirmed after this week&#8217;s final fixtures. Sweden, Northern Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}