Group 9 consisted of six of the 50 teams entered into the European zone: Albania, Armenia, Germany, Northern Ireland, Portugal, and Ukraine. These five teams competed on a home-and-away basis for two of the 15 spots in the final tournament allocated to the European zone, with the group's winner and runner-up claiming those spots.
References
1998 FIFA World Cup qualification – UEFA Group 9 Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA