S’Eagles Avoids Egypt but CIV, Other Top Teams

WORLD CUP 2018 AFRICAN QUALIFYING DRAW

Femi Solaja

As expected, Super Eagles of Nigeria will have to take a thorny path to qualify for the next World finals in Russia when the draw ceremony for the African qualifying tournament hold later this month in Cairo, Egypt.

Based on the latest FIFA ranking as reported last week by Thisday, Nigeria will be in pot B along side the Pharoahs of Egypt thus meant the team team will automaticaly avoid the side that knocked them out of the African Cup of Nations tournament next year.

Aside Nigeria and Egypt, other countries in thesame pot are; Cape Verde, DR Congo and Mali hence the teams will avoid each other.

However, based of the latest FIFA ranking, the top team five teams are automaticaly in pot A namely: Desert Foxes of Algeria, Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire, Black Stars of Ghana, Teranga Lions of Senegal and Carthage Eagles of Tunisia. The seeding process was released today by FIFA.

Nigeria will therefore face one of these top seeds in their quest to qualify for a sixth World Cup finals.

The draw ceremony will come up in Cairo on the 24th of this month at the CAF secretariat in Egypt. In the other Pots, Indomitable Lions of Cameroun, Atlas Lion of Morocco, Syli Star of Guinea, Bafana Bafana of South Africa and Congo are in Pot 3 while Cranes of Uganda, Burkina Faso, Zambia, Gabon and Zambia occupy the last pot.

Egypt eliminated the Super Eagles from next year’s Nations Cup in Gabon after they held them to a 1-1 draw in Kaduna before they beat them 1-0 in Alexandria in March.

The 20 teams will be divided into five groups of five teams and will square up on a home and away league basis with the overall winners qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The qualifiers will run from October till November 2017.