Qualified teams
By the rules of the UEFA qualifying tournament, the first-place finishers in each of the nine groups received automatic berths, along with the best second-place team that had earned the most points. As some groups had six teams and others had five, the matches vs the fifth and sixth place teams were discarded for the purposes of the ranking, despite the fact that discarding results vs the sixth placed team would’ve been sufficient enough.
The eight remaining second-place teams were competed in this round: An open draw was held on 13 October 1997 at FIFA headquarters in Zürich.
| Pos | Grp | Team | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 |  Scotland | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 2 | +6 | 13 | Qualification to 1998 FIFA World Cup |
| 2 | 2 |  Italy | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 0 | +5 | 12 | Advance to second round (play-offs) |
| 3 | 7 |  Belgium | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 11 | 0 | 12 | |
| 4 | 5 |  Russia | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 5 | +7 | 11 | |
| 5 | 1 |  Croatia | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 11 | 8 | +3 | 11 | |
| 6 | 6 |  FR Yugoslavia | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 5 | +2 | 11 | |
| 7 | 8 |  Republic of Ireland | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 6 | +2 | 8 | |
| 8 | 9 |  Ukraine | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 8 | |
| 9 | 3 |  Hungary | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 7 | −3 | 6 |
Source: [1]
