The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has today confirmed the withdrawal of the DPR Korea Football Association from the Asian Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ and AFC Asian Cup China 2023™.
The country's intentions to leave will be referred by the AFC to governing body FIFA, with a decision on how their exit from the competition will affect the rest of the group set to be announced in due course.
North Korea, who had already withdrawn from this summer's rearranged Olympic Games in Tokyo because of Covid-19 concerns, sat in fourth place in the table after five rounds of matches.
They were level on eight points with Lebanon and unbeaten South Korea, who have a game in hand.
Turkmenistan currently top Group H with nine points, while Sri Lanka are the only side who have yet to score a goal or register a point so far.
The remaining group matches form part of the second round of Asia's preliminary tournament in June. Those games will be played in South Korea.
Overall qualification in Asia for next year's World Cup is scheduled to conclude in November 2021.
'Concussion spotters' to feature at Qatar World Cup
Concussion spotters will be introduced at next year's World Cup in Qatar to help make football's treatment of head injuries an "awful lot safer".
Spotters will be positioned in the stands at games and tasked with identifying possible brain injuries which may have been missed by medical staff on the touchline.
Team doctors will also be able to watch video replays at all FIFA tournaments to look for signs of concussion, according to the governing body's medical director Andrew Massey.
"Often in football matches you miss these, even if you're sitting on the front row," Massey said in an interview on FIFA's YouTube channel.
"All FIFA competitions will have video replays. All FIFA competitions will have concussion spotters in the stand who can go through all these things and relay information to the team benches if it is needed."
Dipsiiii7
591
Now it's our India's time,, give them a chance please😜🥰
SandeepBoro
477
Nepal into the world cup ❤️
cris7iano123
422
Nepali People are waiting
babypian
420
North Korea Be Like - No Problem We are Only Cares About Military Not Sport🤣🤣🤣
babypian
375
Kim Jong Un Be Like - Are You Kidding Me ,Don't You Afraid Of Nuclear Weapon☹️☹️☹️
Brightberry
307
Waiting for VAR to confirm...
YR11
284
As Korea Has withdrawn then give india a chance Indian fans will Be very happy ☺️🤣
ishti
237
"Not a problem, the media in my country will announce that we have won the Asia Cup"
Harsh9
15
As Korea Has withdrawn then give india a chance Indian fans will Be very happy ☺️🤣
some people in the reply section trolling India.. that they can play football...and blah blah...lmao..Every nation has one sport has its strength..If you can beat us at football..we can beat you at cricket... Understand the fact that Football is New sport for India.. even though football was introduced long back. Cricket is a religion here.. so it's obvious..people follow cricket more than Football...it got recognized in recent year..so just keep calm..we will be up there one day..
Harsh_22_N
11
As Korea Has withdrawn then give india a chance Indian fans will Be very happy ☺️🤣
people here whose countries are poorer and stand no where near india are indulged in punching down india for a certain thing......do you know British looted us which in today's world worths 45 trillion dollars still we bounced back and today india is world's fifth largest economy in the world......I know this is not related to football but this for the people who don't about india and consider india still as a poor country.