{"id":204512,"date":"2025-10-11T03:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T03:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/204512\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T03:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T03:21:08","slug":"wales-world-cup-fate-in-own-hands-after-belgium-and-north-macedonia-stalemate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/204512\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales&#8217; World Cup fate in own hands after Belgium and North Macedonia stalemate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wales&#8217; World Cup qualifying fate is back in their own hands after group rivals Belgium and North Macedonia cancelled each other out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">North Macedonia top Group J after holding out for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/ckgyxnm2xglt\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">goalless draw in Ghent<\/a> against second-place Belgium, who travel to Cardiff on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wales are third ahead of that game knowing they will secure automatic qualification for the 2026 tournament if they win their remaining three games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">North Macedonia lead the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/world-cup-qualifying-european\/table\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">group standings<\/a> with 12 points from six games, one point ahead of Belgium and two ahead of Wales, who both have a game in hand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The team finishing second will enter the play-offs in March, while Wales could even make that stage by finishing third following their performance in the Nations League last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales&#8217; World Cup qualifying fate is back in their own hands after group rivals Belgium and North Macedonia&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-204512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}