Afcon 2023: South Africa to face Ghana yet again?

Bafana Bafana could potentially face Ghana yet again with the two countries having fallen into two different pots in their seeding ranks ahead of the draw for the TotalEnergies 2023 AFCON qualifiers.

Next year’s tournament – for which qualification is non-negotiable for Hugo Broos – will be held in Cote d’Ivoire from June 23 – July 23.

Ahead of the draw for the qualifiers set to start at the end of next month Bafana will be the top-seeded team in pot Two which has Cape Verde, Guinea, Gabon, Benin, Uganda, Zambia, Congo Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, Kenya, and Sierra Leone.

Pot One has the top 12 ranked countries on the continent – Senegal, Morocco, Nigeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Cameroon, Algeria, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Congo Kinshasa.

The seedlings are based on the December 2021 FIFA rankings with the 48 countries through to this stage of qualifiers to be drawn into twelve groups of four teams with the winners and runners-up going through.

CAF has outlined that if the host nation will play in the qualifiers and if they finish outside the two in their group then the worst-ranked team among the runners-up will not qualify.

Bafana will meet one of the 12 teams in Pot One which features Ghana, who they played in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers and again in the 2021 AFCON qualifiers with The Black Stars coming tops on both occasions.

The most recent qualifiers left South Africa with a bitter pill to swallow which led to SAFA filing a complaint with FIFA, which was then dismissed.

According to the seedings, Bafana could face the same four teams that were in their World Cup group Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia.

A favourable group would be Congo Kinshasa/Burkina Faso/Mali then Comoros/Malawi/Mozambique/Namibia from Pot 3 and Bostwana/Lesotho/Eswatini from Pot 4.

Bafana will hope to avoid Senegal and Morocco at all costs.

Pot 3 has Namibia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Libya, Mozambique, Malawi, Togo, Zimbabwe, Gambia, Angola, and Comoros while Pot 4 features Tanzania, Central Africa Republic, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana, Liberia, South Sudan, and Sao Tome and Principe.

In the last qualifiers, Bafana failed to qualify from a group featuring two lowly ranked nations Sudan and Sao Tome and Principe.

CAF is yet to confirm the date for the draw, but four qualifiers will be played during the next FIFA calendar break running from May 30 to June 14.

Another two games will then be played from September 19 – 27.

Only one more FIFA calendar date (March 20 – 28) will be available before the finals in the West African country who have previously won the tournament twice.

Source: Kick-off

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