2018 FIFA World Cup qualification – UEFA Second Round


The UEFA Second Round was contested by the best eight runners-up from the nine first round groups from the UEFA segment of the qualification tournament for the 2018 FIFA World Cup final tournament. The winners — Croatia, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland — of each of four home and away ties joined the group winners in the World Cup in Russia. These pairs of matches, also commonly known as the playoffs, were held in November 2017. The losers were Greece, Italy, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland.
The draw for the ties was held in Zürich on 17 October 2017, with the October 2017 FIFA World Rankings being used in deciding which of the teams would be seeded.

Qualified teams

The eight best runners-up from the UEFA First Round qualified for the play-offs; at the time of the draw, with two groups having one team fewer than the others, matches against the sixth-placed team in each First Round group were not included in this ranking. UEFA confirmed that, even after the admission of Gibraltar and Kosovo and with all groups now containing six teams, this regulation did not change and matches against the sixth-placed team in all groups were still discarded. As a result, eight matches played by each team counted for the purposes of ranking the runners-up.

Ranking of the runner-up teams

The eight best runners-up were determined by the following parameters, in this order:
  1. Highest number of points
  2. Goal difference
  3. Highest number of goals scored
  4. Fair play points
  5. Drawing of lots

    Seeding and draw

The second round draw took place on 17 October 2017 at 14:00 CEST, at the FIFA headquarters in Zürich, Switzerland. Teams were seeded based on October 2017 FIFA World Rankings, with each tie seeing a seeded team drawn against an unseeded team. Each tie's order of legs was decided as part of the draw.
The draw was conducted by Mexican TV presenter Vanessa Huppenkothen with the assistance of former Spain international Fernando Hierro.
Pot 1Pot 2














Playoffs

The first legs were played on 9–11 November, and the second legs were played on 12–14 November 2017.
Times are CET as listed by UEFA.


Switzerland won 1–0 on aggregate and qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
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Croatia won 4–1 on aggregate and qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
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Denmark won 5–1 on aggregate and qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
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Sweden won 1–0 on aggregate and qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Goalscorers

There were 13 goals scored in 8 matches, for an average of goals per match.
;3 goals
;1 goal
A player is automatically suspended for the next match for the following offences:
The following suspensions were served during the qualifying matches:
PlayerTeamOffenceSuspended for match
David Meyler vs Wales
vs Wales 		vs Denmark
Mikael Lustig vs Netherlands
vs Netherlands 		vs Italy
Corry Evans vs Azerbaijan
vs Switzerland 		vs Switzerland
Marco Verratti vs Spain
vs Sweden 		vs Sweden