Super Eagles of Nigeria will know their 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying play-off opponent on January 22 in Douala, Cameroon.
The Executive Committee of the Confederations of African Football (CAF) announced the date and venue for the draw at its meeting.
The Eagles and nine other qualified teams will be divided into two levels based on the official FIFA ranking, published in November 2021.
The five highest ranked teams will play against the five least ranked teams (the first leg will be played at home of the lower ranked teams).
According to the ranking published on the 19th of November 2021 after the last round, the distribution of the teams will see Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Nigeria in Pot one and Egypt, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali and DR Congo will be in Pot two.
Meanwhile, the EXCO announced that the date and venue for the Côte d’Ivoire 2023 AFCON qualifying draw will also hold in Douala on 21 January 2022.
The preliminary round will be played by a knock-out system: home and away matches and will include the lower ranked teams in accordance with the FIFA rankings.
And the teams qualified from this round will reach the group stage composed of 48 teams.
By James Agberebi
5 Comments
If Algeria happened to be our opponent in the play off ahead of the world cup staged in Qatar I don’t think super Eagles stand the chance of qualifying. The Algerian side are unbeaten in thier 34 matches.They have the calibre of players to do job for them and they adhere to instructions. But over here in Nigeria what has our leagues,Is the Nigeria Football Federation doing anything different to improve our league,what role does govt play.Our grassroot football is completely dead.Take for instance some of the 94 squad that won nations cup with Clement westerhof they picked from street and they did exceptionally well.While is it that it could no longer continue. All attention has shifted to foriegn base players not even our domestic league.most of the players that will fly the flag high for the pharoes of Egypt are from domestic league making their country proud.On the issue hiring a foreign technical adviser,his pedigree not beign check,why is that somebody who coach Venezuela at of ten matches his team only won one and lost nine and Nigeria sees him as the best man for the super eagles job.If they need a foreign coach it should be a world class coach with pedigree. Why was zidane not contacted for the job.It is quiet unfortunate our dear nation don’t learn from mistake. Let us watch and see what happens at afcon.
Lol……@Osayende Oroboh so you want Zidane to coach Nigeria? Dream on guy……….what makes you think Nigeria has the profile of a team Zidane could ever agreed to consider coaching?
Forget about this clamour for home based players, they are simply not good enough these days unlike during Westerhof’s era where only a handful of our players are overseas based. Did you forget that Westerhof picked players from domestic league but has to market them to overseas teams to be polished before we started playing with finesse and panache of a champion.
Algeria and Nigeria are both in the top five African ranking so they can’t be paired. Nigeria will face one of the following:
Egypt
Cameroon
Mali
DR Congo
Ghana
The top five most ranked African countries are Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Nigeria. They will be in separate pots during the draw and that means they can’t face each other. CAF will use November, 2021 FIFA ranking for the draw.
It is obvious most of you don’t read content before commenting.
True talk my brother, some of us don’t read before commenting, we are not playing any of the best five term in Africa because according to FIFA Rankin, Nigeria is one of the to five in Africa. Talking about the home base players, my brother, them know good oooo we must tell ourselves the truth.