Eleven European nations are guaranteed to qualify for next year\u2019s Women\u2019s World Cup in Brazil, the tenth edition and last with 32 teams before an expansion to 48 from 2031.<\/p>\n
Only four teams sealed their direct route to the finals under Uefa\u2019s format, they being the winners of the four League A mini-groups; Germany, Denmark, champions Spain and France, the team that topped Ireland\u2019s pool.<\/p>\n
Of the remainder, 32 are funnelled into a convoluted play-off system, split into two phases.<\/p>\n
Because Ireland finished ninth in the overall standings across top-tier groups, avoiding bottom spot by beating Poland twice and France once, they were placed on the easier path as a seeded team.<\/p>\n
Their reward was drawing a League C opponents in their semi, and Kazakhstan were the most favourable of the options.<\/p>\n
As with the semi, another advantage conferred on the seeded team in being at home in the second leg. Belgium lead Poland 1-0 in the other semi-final of Ireland\u2019s pathway ahead of their rematch in Gdansk (5pm).<\/p>\n
Even victory in that final doesn\u2019t necessarily secure a flight to Brazil next summer but one earlier in February.<\/p>\n
Eight victors will emerge from the finals in early December but the lowest seeded of those must participate in an Intercontinental tournament.<\/p>\n
The venue for that mini-tournament has yet to be confirmed but that last version, in 2023, was held by co-hosts New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eleven European nations are guaranteed to qualify for next year\u2019s Women\u2019s World Cup in Brazil, the tenth edition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,2539,5782,43,5783],"class_list":["post-653061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-league-of-ireland","tag-local-soccer","tag-news","tag-premiership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653061","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=653061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}