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ALL SET FOR AFRICAN TEAMS’ RACE TO QATAR 2022 WORLD CUP

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The qualifying draw for the World Cup 2022 for African teams will be conducted at the CAF headquarters on Monday at 12 noon, Nigerian time.

 

A total of 54 entries are from the continent.The 26 highest ranked teams, according to the official FIFA ranking will be exempted from the preliminary round leaving 28 participating teams.

 

The 28 teams are Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Malawi, Togo, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini and Lesotho.

 

The others are Comoros, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mauritius, Gambia, South Sudan, Chad, Sao Tomé e Principe, Seychelles, Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea.

Of these 28 teams, the 14 highest ranked teams according to the FIFA ranking released on Thursday will play against the 14 least ranked teams. 

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The first leg will be played at home of the lower ranked teams. The 14 winners will join the 26 teams that are exempted from the first phase of the draw.

The next phase will then involved the 14 preliminary winners and the 26 exempted teams to form a pool of 40.

The 40 teams will then be split into ten groups of four for the second qualifying round.

As it was in the qualifying series for Brazil 2014, the 10 group winners will be drawn against each other in home-and-away fixtures, with the five victors advancing to Qatar 2022.

 

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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