Luxembourg’s Red Lions will kick off their Fifa 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign with a match against Qatar on 24 March 2021. The world cup finals host country has been added to the Uefa qualifying group A schedule to give their team some match practice--as hosts they qualify automatically for the finals. They will play their “home” matches in Europe to avoid unnecessary travel for the other teams in the group, and the results of the matches they play will not count towards actual qualification.

On Saturday 27 March, the Red Lions travel to Dublin for the away match against Ireland.

Luxembourg’s first home tie is against Portugal three days later, on Tuesday 30 March. That puts pressure on the new national stadium to be ready for what will be a guaranteed sell-out--the stadium’s capacity is just over 9,000--if covid-19 restrictions on fan attendance have been lifted by then.

There is then a long gap to allow the completion of domestic and European club competitions and the postponed Uefa 2020 championship to take place over the summer before Luxembourg spring in to qualifying action again, this time at home to Azerbaijan on 1 September.

An away match on 4 September against Serbia is followed by home ties against Qatar (7 September) and Serbia (9 October) and then further away matches in Portugal (12 October) and Azerbaijan (11 November). The Red Lions then round off their qualifying campaign with the home match against Ireland in front of what promises to be another capacity crowd at the national stadium on 14 November.

Uefa has a full list of all fixtures in all groups here.

Ticket sales for the home games have not yet been announced as the FLF football federation waits for updates on possible covid-19 restrictions next year. As soon as they are announced, Delano will publish details.