{"id":177181,"date":"2025-12-05T21:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/177181\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T21:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:10:07","slug":"ireland-to-face-mexico-south-korea-and-south-africa-if-they-qualify-for-world-cup-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/177181\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland to face Mexico, South Korea and South Africa if they qualify for World Cup \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">If the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\">Republic of Ireland<\/a> qualify for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/world-cup\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/world-cup\/\">2026 World Cup<\/a> via the play-offs in March, they will feature in Group A against co-hosts Mexico, South Korea and South Africa. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">To book a place at North America \u201926, Ireland must overcome the Czech Republic in Prague on March 26th before beating Denmark or North Macedonia in a play-off final in Dublin on March 31st. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The opening fixture for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/heimir-hallgrimsson\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/heimir-hallgrimsson\/\">Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson\u2019s<\/a> team would be against South Korea on June 11th at Estadio Akron in the Mexican city of Zapopan. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ireland\u2019s second match would be against South Africa at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on June 18th before facing Mexico at the iconic Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on June 24th. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The opening game of the tournament is between Mexico and South Africa at the Azteca on June 11th. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Twelve group winners and 12 runners-up will be joined in the round of 32 by the best eight third place teams. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">If Ireland finish runner-up in Group A, they would face the runner-up in Group B which contains co-host Canada, Switzerland, Qatar and the winner of the uefa play-off A, which could be Italy, Northern Ireland, Wales or Bosnia-Herzegovina, at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California on June 28th. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Group A winner will play a third placed team at the Azteca.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Shamrock Rovers captain Roberto \u2018Pico\u2019 Lopes will be part of the Cape Verde squad that is drawn in Group H against Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">More to follow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Republic of Ireland qualify for the 2026 World Cup via the play-offs in March, they will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2956,4700,61,60,1842,112,4018],"class_list":["post-177181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-fifa","tag-heimir-hallgrimsson","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}