The OFC

qualification Qualification may refer to: Processes * Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS), a competitive contract procurement process established by the United States Congress * Process qualification, ensures that manufacturing and production processes can ...

for the

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saw teams of the

Oceania Football Confederation The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) is one of the six continental confederations of international association football. The OFC has 13 members, 11 of which are full members and two which are associate members not affiliated with FIFA. It ...

competing for a place in the finals held in

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Format

The initial format was scheduled to begin in August 2011 at the

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in Noumea,

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, where the men's football tournament was to double as the first stage of the OFC World Cup qualifying competition. However, in June 2011 the format was amended, and the Pacific Games were no longer part of the qualification process. The new structure saw the four lowest ranked entrants play a single round-robin tournament from 22 to 26 November 2011 in Samoa. The top team in this tournament then joined the other seven teams in the

2012 OFC Nations Cup The 2012 OFC Nations Cup was the ninth edition of the OFC Nations Cup organised by the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC). The group stage of the tournament also doubled as the second round of the OFC qualification tournament for the 2014 FIFA ...

, with the four semifinalists from that tournament advancing to the third round. This stage was originally scheduled to be held in Fiji in June 2012, but on 14 March 2012 the hosting rights were stripped from Fiji as a result of an ongoing legal dispute involving OFC general secretary Tai Nicholas and Fijian authorities. The loss of the finals was confirmed by the Fiji Football Association on 16 March. The third round consisted of a double round-robin held on a home-and-away basis, scheduled to take place between 7 September 2012 and 26 March 2013. The third round winners competed in the intercontinental play-offs with CONCACAF's fourth-placed team, which was chosen through a random draw, rather than being decided by FIFA beforehand as in previous tournaments (e.g., 2010 against a team from AFC, 2006 against a team from CONMEBOL). An early proposal to allow the qualifying winner to the final group stage of AFC qualification was submitted by

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. This proposal, supported by OFC, would have replaced the intercontinental play-off that had been used in recent qualification tournaments, but was not adopted.

Entrants

The July 2011 FIFA Ranking is shown in brackets.

First round

Based on FIFA ranks and other sporting considerations, the first round featured

American Samoa American Samoa is an Territories of the United States, unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States located in the Polynesia region of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. Centered on , it is southeast of the island count ...

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Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

and

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

and were played as a single round-robin tournament in Samoa from 22 to 26 November 2011. The winner of the group advanced to the

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. The matches involving American Samoa are featured in the 2014 documentary Next Goal Wins and the 2023 dramatized film of the same name.

Second round

The winner of the first round joined the remaining seven OFC teams in the

. The four semifinalists (the top two teams from each group in the group stage) advanced to the third round. The groups were drawn at the World Cup Preliminary Draw at the Marina da Glória in

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on 30 July 2011. The tournament was held in the Solomon Islands from 1 to 10 June 2012. Fiji had been the proposed host, but had their hosting rights revoked on 14 March 2012.

Seeding

The teams were seeded into two pots of 4 based on the July 2011 FIFA World Rankings, with the first round winner automatically seeded eighth. Each group consisted of two teams from each pot. ^† First round winner whose identity was not known at the time of the draw.

Group stage

Group A

Group B

Knockout stage

The four semifinalists in the 2012 OFC Nations Cup advanced to the third round of World Cup qualifying, regardless of the outcome of the knockout rounds. The final results of the OFC Nations Cup knockout stage matches do count in other ways as part of the World Cup qualifying, with FIFA counting goalscorers in the qualifying statistics, and cards given contributing to suspensions in the third round of World Cup qualifying.

Third round

The four remaining teams played a double round-robin between 7 September 2012 and 26 March 2013, with the top team advancing to the intercontinental play-off. Note that – unlike the previously announced format – this means the team that advances to the intercontinental play-off may be different from the team that wins the OFC Nations Cup, and represents the OFC at the 2013 Confederations Cup. The draw for the fixtures was conducted at OFC Headquarters in

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, New Zealand, on 26 June 2012. The matches were scheduled to take place in the period from 7 September 2012 to 26 March 2013.

Inter-confederation play-offs

The winner of the OFC qualification tournament,

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, played against

CONCACAF The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, abbreviated as CONCACAF ( ; typeset for branding purposes since 2018 as Concacaf), is one of FIFA's six continental governing bodies for association football. Its 4 ...

's fourth-placed team,

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, in a home-and-away play-off.

, the winner of this play-off, qualified for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The first leg was played on 13 November 2013, and the second leg was played on 20 November 2013.

Top goalscorers

Below are full goalscorer lists for each round: *

First round First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

Second round The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...

Third round Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system Places * 3rd Street (di ...

References

External links

Results and schedule (FIFA.com version)
*Results and schedule (oceaniafootball.com version)
First round

Second round (OFC Nations Cup)

Third round
{{DEFAULTSORT:2014 Fifa World Cup Qualification Ofc FIFA World Cup qualification (OFC)