The road to Abidjan
Group stage of 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying gets underway in June ahead of next year’s tournament in Ivory Coast
Holders Senegal have been handed a comfortable route to the next Africa Cup of Nations and will begin the qualifying campaign for Ivory Coast 2023 almost five months to the day after winning their first continental title.
But it is probably not what they need less than six months away from competing at the World Cup finals.
They are scheduled to take on Benin in their opening Group L qualifier and then play away in Rwanda in June. But they would be better served taking on South American or Asian opponents for a better sense of what they are to face at the World Cup finals.
Unlike Europe and the CONCACAF region, where they are beginning their Nations League campaigns, Africa is using June’s international matchdays, plus those in September, as qualifiers for the next Cup of Nations. As a result, the level of competition for the World Cup-bound teams could turn out to be far from taxing and far from sufficient.
Senegal’s predicament is shared by the other four African representatives in Qatar: Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia.
They must all play their first two qualifiers in June and then two more in September, before completing qualification in March 2023, some three months before the tournament kicks off in the Ivory Coast.
The qualifying draw was conducted in late April and is a fairly standard assignment for the continent’s leading football powers.
The two top teams in each of the 12 groups advance, except Group H, where hosts Ivory Coast already have their place assured, and the highest finisher out of Comoros, Lesotho
and Zambia will qualify.
Zambia are among those who missed out on the last finals, hosted at the start of the year, and will be looking to make amends. They should be too strong for the other two in the group, even after all the heroics that the tiny Comoros Islands performed at the tournament in Cameroon.
Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa are other countries seeking to restore battered reputations.
Angola were drawn in Group E along with top seeds Ghana, Madagascar and the Central African Republic while the Congolese, who have kept Hector Cuper on as coach despite losing in the March World Cup play-offs, are in Group I with Gabon, Mauritania and Sudan.
South Africa were drawn in Group K alongside Morocco, a country with which they have frosty relations.
South Africa were among the handful of African countries who did not support Morocco’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2026 World Cup finals, giving their vote instead to the successful combined bid by Canada, Mexico and the United States.
It was a political decision over the disputed Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony that Morocco annexed in1975. South Africa, like many other countries in the region with former liberation movements now serving as ruling parties, supports the so-called Saharan Arab Democratic Republic, established by the Polisario Front, which is fighting Morocco over the disputed territory.
This antagonism is unlikely to be felt by the footballers themselves but always adds an edge to any confrontation between Morocco and South Africa.
After both Comoros and the Gambia made debut appearances at the Cup of Nations finals in Cameroon at the start of the year, there are only ten of the 54 African member countries yet to compete in the finals.
Of them, Djibouti, Eritrea (who withdrew before playing, yet again), Seychelles and Somalia did not make it past the preliminary rounds of matches in March but Eswatini might fancy their chances of a top-two finish in Group B (with Burkina Faso, Cape Verde Islands and Togo) and a first-ever place in the finals.
The small southern African kingdom have made major progress in continental club football with top team Royal Leopard reaching the group stage of the African Confederation Cup where they picked up invaluable experience, even if they had to play all their “home” matches outside of the country because there is no stadium up to scratch for the hosting of internationals inside of Eswatini.
That is also the case for many other African countries as the Confederation of African Football continues to crack down on poor facilities. As was the case with last year’s World Cup qualifiers, many countries will be forced to move their matches to neutral venues, and will thus lose the advantage of home stadiums packed with their own fans.
The level of competition for the World Cup-bound teams could turn out to be far from taxing and far from sufficient