HOW THE PLAY-OFFS WORK

THE winners from each of the nine groups qualify for next summer’s World Cup, while the second-placed teams head for the play-offs.

ONLY the eight best runners-up make it to the play-offs. The second-placed team with the fewest points misses out. As it stands, Bosnia would be the unlucky loser.

WHEN ranking the nine runners-up, results against the bottom-ranked sides from each group are discarded, so only eight matches played by each country count in the calculation.

THE play-offs are over two legs, home and away, with all matches played between November 9 and November 14. The draw is next month.

TEAMS will be seeded according to their FIFA ranking — as it stands, Portugal, Italy, Sweden and Slovakia will be seeded.