The Federation of International Football Association, FIFA, world soccer governing body, over the weekend, made amendments to the qualifying rules for the 2010 World cup/ African Cup of Nations tournaments. Due to the withdrawal of Eritrea in group 11 of the qualifying groups,FIFA had to modify the regulations determining the progressions of teams to the next phase of the qualifying race.
The top 11 group leaders, followed by the next eight best qualifiers were scheduled to scale through to the next round. But FIFA has applied a small modification to the rules tha would produce the best eight qualifiers considering the fewer points that would be amassed in group 11. FIFA stated that in order to apply fairness to the selection of the best eight qualifiers, the runners-up in each of the groups would have the results against the fourth best team subtracted. This way, there would be similar number of matches considered.
FIFA also decided that should there be a tie between teams during the ranking, the following criteria would be used to break the tie: greater number of points obtained in matches between the tied teams,goal difference in matches between the tied teams and greater number of goals scored in matches between the tied teams. If there is still a tie in selecting the final eight teams, the two teams will have to play each other in a play-off at a neutral venue, with extra-time and penalties if necessary.