Norway venue for Malta in April's Qualifying Group

The draws were made on Tuesday for the Qualifying Round of the 2024 FIFA Futsal World Cup. The Malta Futsal Team will be involved in the preliminary round to be contested between 4 and 13 April 2022. In total this early stage of competition will involve 24 teams playing in six mini-tournaments for 12 places in the main round. Malta team led by coach Zeljko Anicic has been drawn in Group B to be contested very far from home in Norway who will be the hosts in a group also comprising alongside Malta, Denmark and Cyprus. As indicated during Press Conference on Tuesday outlining vision for Futsal Development going forward and in which also was announced friendly matches lined-up for the Malta team ahead of this important qualifying group, the Cyprus home friendlies scheduled for second week of March will now be dropped due to the fact both sides will face each other in same group therefore they will not be able to rub shoulders in a friendly game ahead of the proper contest between them. Preliminary round drawGroup A: Montenegro, Germany (hosts), San Marino, Gibraltar Group B: Norway (hosts), Denmark, Cyprus, Malta Group C: Kosovo, Armenia, Bulgaria (hosts), Scotland Group D: Turkey, Israel, Lithuania (hosts), Northern Ireland Group E: Albania, Sweden (hosts), Andorra, Austria Group F: Moldova (hosts), Greece, Switzerland, Estonia The top two teams in each group progress to the main round group stage to join the 24 nations entering in that round: Spain, Russia, holders Portugal, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Italy, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Finland, Romania, Slovakia, Georgia, Belarus, Netherlands, Hungary, France, Belgium, Latvia, North Macedonia.