The ninth edition of the Futsal World Cup will be hosted by Lithuania in September and October this year with the participation of 24 teams. These competitions are postponed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
The pandemic even changed the way teams qualified for the World Cup, and the Asian continent was more affected than any other continent.
Five teams from the Asian continent will compete in the World Cup this year which include, Iran, Japan, Uzbekistan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Asian Championships to determine the five qualified teams were initially scheduled to be hosted by Turkmenistan in 2019, but the pandemic made Turkmenistan to call off its decision to host the tournament with Kuwait introduced as the new host.
The Asian Federation Confederation (AFC) ultimately failed to host the competition, and it used a combination of selection and scoring mechanisms to determine the qualified teams. Accordingly, Iran, Japan and Uzbekistan went to the World Cup due to the results of previous editions and technical points. To select the two other remaining teams, it was decided to hold a centralized and selective competition and finally Thailand was pitted against Iraq and Lebanon against Vietnam.
Iran's national futsal team won third place in the previous World Cup, hosted by Colombia.
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