Groups were decided for two qualifying combined tournaments

On 17 July at the capital of Malaysia happened the draw for two important joint qualifying competitions: World Cup 2022 (Asian region only) and for the Asian Cup event which is going to start one year later. In total, 40 teams were equally divided in 8 groups, where there will be 10 rounds in each group which their quest for the third qualifying round are going to pursue from this fall and will last until June 2020.
From pot 5 to pot 1 Tim Cahill have pulled out all teams (from the weakest to the strongest), and placed them in the following groups as is shown below:

Group A: Guam, Maldives, Philippines, Syria, People's Republic of China.

Group B: Nepal, Kuwait, Chinese Taipei, Jordan, Australia.

Group C: Cambodia, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Iraq, Islamic Republic of Iran.

Group D: Singapore, Yemen, Palestine, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia.

Group E: Qatar*, Afghanistan, India, Oman, Bangladesh.

Group F: Mongolia, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Japan.

Group G: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates.

Group H: Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Lebanon, South Korea.

* The hosts of the next World Cup originally was a pot 1 team, but as Qatar competes at Copa America 2020 they immediately swapped position places with Bangladesh in order to adjust matches between these qualifiers and the South American championship next year.