2026 FIFA World Cup Africa qualifiers draw |15 July 2023
10 matches await Seychelles in group F
Seychelles were drawn in group F as the path to the 2026 Fifa World Cup for Africa’s 54 teams was laid out in Côte d’Ivoire on Thursday at the close of the 45th Caf ordinary general meeting.
Seychelles will play 10 matches ̶ five home and five away ̶ against the five other teams of group F picked at Thursday’s Confederation of African Football (Caf) World Cup 2026 qualifying draw.
Like Seychelles, four of the other five teams drawn in group F ̶ Gabon, Kenya, The Gambia and Burundi ̶ have never reached the World Cup finals stage.
Once again, they might not because standing in their way are no other than mighty Côte d’Ivoire who have made three World Cup finals phase appearances in 2006, 2010 and 2014 with their best result being a 17th position out of 32 teams in 2010.
Contrary to the past when 32 teams qualified for the World Cup finals, a total of 48 will do so in 2026 to accomplish the desire of the Fédération internationale de Football Association (Fifa) Fifa president Gianni Infantino to give more countries at least a chance to dream about qualification and in doing so boost football worldwide.
President Infantino was present alongside Caf president Patrice Motsepe in the Ivorian capital Abidjan on Thursday for the draw which took place after the Caf annual ordinary meeting.
He said that with this increase, nine and possibly 10 African teams will qualify compared to the past when only five could do so.
“In the past there had been talk of increasing the number of qualifiers from Africa by one, but this new format may even double the original number,” he told Caf delegates before the draw.
For the draw, the 54 Caf member associations were seeded in six pots and then drawn into nine groups, each consisting of six teams. The teams for the pots were seeded as per their FIifa world ranking with the highest ranked ones in pot 1 and the lowest in pot 6.
Seychelles was in pot 6 along with Lesotho, South Sudan, Mauritius, Chad, São Tomé and Príncipe, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia.
Teams within each of the nine groups of six teams will play in a home and away, round-robin, format with each of the group winners qualifying automatically for the Fifa World Cup 2026.
The four best second-placed teams across the groups will then compete in an African playoff stage to determine Caf’s representative at the Fifa playoff mini tournament where the two final teams to join the World Cup finalists will be decided.
The Fifa play-off tournament will feature one team from each of Fifa's six confederations, except UEFA, plus one additional team from the host confederation (Concacaf).
Two of the six teams in the mini tournament will be seeded based on the Fifa/Coca-Cola world ranking. The seeded teams will play for a Fifa World Cup berth against the winners of the first two knockout games involving the four unseeded teams.
Should the Caf representative emerge as one of the two teams qualifying from the Fifa playoff mini tournament, the Africa continent will have 10 teams in the Fifa World Cup 2026 to be played in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The order of play for the qualifying matches in each of the nine groups is not yet known but they will take place over 10 match days during the next two years: November 13-21, 2023; June 3-11, 2024; March 17-25, 2025; September 1-9, 2025; October 6-14, 2025; November 10-18, 2025 (playoffs).
There is no question that more matches between nations on the African continent will surely bring additional excitement for nations and all football lovers. However, it could also become a burden for the minnows without a chance of qualifying, who will have to crisscross the continent to complete their qualifying programme.
This could be particularly so for those who, apart from being minnows, would still not have a certified stadium to host their home fixtures when the time comes and would have to play all ten matches abroad.
The Seychelles Football Federation was represented at the draw in Abidjan by its vice-president Dolor Ernesta and general secretary Denis Rose who were there for the Caf ordinary general meeting.
The following are all the nine Africa World Cup qualifying groups:
Group A: Egypt, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Djibouti.
Group B: Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritania, Togo, Sudan, South Sudan.
Group C: Nigeria, South Africa, Benin, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Lesotho.
Group D: Cameroon, Cape Verde, Angola, Libya, Eswatini, Mauritius.
Group E: Morocco, Zambia, Congo, Tanzania, Niger, Eritrea
Group F: Ivory Coast, Gabon, Kenya, The Gambia, Burundi, Seychelles.
Group G: Algeria, Guinea, Uganda, Mozambique, Botswana, Somalia
Group H: Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, Malawi, Liberia, Sao Tome e Principe
Group I: Mali, Ghana, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Comoros, Chad.
Contributed