2018 FIFA World Cup qualification – AFC Third Round

The third round of AFC matches for 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification is being played from 1 September 2016 to 5 September 2017.

Format
A total of 12 teams which advanced from the second round (the eight group winners and the four best group runners-up) were divided into two groups of six teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The top two teams of each group will qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and the two third-placed teams will advance to the fourth round.

Seeding
The draw for the third round was held on 12 April 2016, at 16:30 MST (UTC+8), at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The seeding are based on the FIFA World Rankings of April 2016 (shown in parentheses below). The 12 teams are seeded into six pots:
 * Pot 1 contained the teams ranked 1–2.
 * Pot 2 contained the teams ranked 3–4.
 * Pot 3 contained the teams ranked 5–6.
 * Pot 4 contained the teams ranked 7–8.
 * Pot 5 contained the teams ranked 9–10.
 * Pot 6 contained the teams ranked 11–12.

Each group contained one team from each of the six pots. The fixtures of each group were automatically decided based on the respective pot of each team.

Goalscorers
There have been 39 goals scored in 18 matches, for an average of goals per match.


 * 3 goals


 * Nawaf Al Abed
 * Ahmed Khalil


 * 2 goals


 * 🇦🇺 Tomi Juric
 * 🇯🇵 Genki Haraguchi
 * Ali Mabkhout


 * 1 goal


 * 🇦🇺 Tim Cahill
 * 🇦🇺 Massimo Luongo
 * 🇦🇺 Trent Sainsbury
 * 🇨🇳 Hao Junmin
 * 🇨🇳 Yu Hai
 * 🇮🇷 Reza Ghoochannejhad
 * 🇮🇷 Jalal Hosseini
 * 🇮🇷 Alireza Jahanbakhsh
 * 🇮🇶 Saad Abdul-Amir
 * 🇮🇶 Mohannad Abdul-Raheem
 * 🇯🇵 Takuma Asano
 * 🇯🇵 Keisuke Honda
 * 🇯🇵 Hotaru Yamaguchi
 * 🇶🇦 Hassan Al-Haidos
 * 🇶🇦 Sebastián Soria
 * Taisir Al-Jassim
 * Nasser Al-Shamrani
 * 🇰🇷 Ji Dong-won
 * 🇰🇷 Ki Sung-yueng
 * 🇰🇷 Koo Ja-cheol
 * 🇰🇷 Lee Chung-yong
 * 🇰🇷 Son Heung-min
 * 🇸🇾 Mahmoud Al-Mawas
 * 🇹🇭 Tana Chanabut
 * 🇺🇿 Alexander Geynrikh
 * 🇺🇿 Egor Krimets


 * 1 own goal


 * 🇨🇳 Zheng Zhi (playing against South Korea)