World Cup 2014: African Play-offs Drawn

The 2014 World Cup - African play-offs has just been conducted in Cairo, Egypt. The play-offs winners are to be determined by two legs encounters - home and away. The winner then qualify automatically to the Brazil summer mundial. Without much ado, here are the draws:

Ivory Coast      vs   Senegal
Ghana              vs   Egypt
Ethiopia           vs   Nigeria
Tunisia            vs   Cameroon  
Burkina Faso   vs   Algeria

The number one ranked African country in football will be playing against Senegal, the team they met in the African Cup of Nations qualifier match in Dakar, Oct. 2012. Riot broke out in that match as Ivory Coast led 2 - 0 in the match with about 70 minutes played.

 

 The match was abandoned and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the football governing body in Africa, banned Senegal for one year, no home matches would be played in Senegal, so they played all their home games in neutral countries - Guinea and Morocco. The ban will be over by the time Terenge Lions will be playing the return leg in November.

The second ranked African Ghana, will be playing against Egypt - the only country that had 100% results during the qualifying phase. With the ongoing unrest in Egypt, it is not known at the time, this article is being written, whether the Pharaohs will be playing their home game in Cairo or continue to play in El Gouna town, with 12,000 seater stadium.

Algeria is the third ranked country and will be meeting the finalist in the 2013 African Cup of Nations - Burkina Faso. Though Algeria is ranked the third best African team, the Burkinabes has shown that they are a force to reckon with. Their qualification for the play-offs and finalist at the ACN is there as proof for anyone to see.

The fourth seeded team is the current African champions - Nigeria, which is drawn against Ethiopia. It is pertinent to note here, that the two countries has met 7 times already and the champions had the upper hand. Out of the 7 times, Nigeria has won 5 times, drew one and lost one. Nigeria must not underate the Ethiopians, after all they did not qualify for the play-offs by shear accident. They worked hard to be here.

The fifth seed is Tunisia against Cameroon. Tunisia was seeded fifth, because the fifth ranked African team Mali did not qualify for the play-offs, hence Tunisia the sixth ranked. Tunisia did not initially qualify for the play-offs, but last week Cape Verde which qualified, was punished by FIFA with 3 points deduction, for fielding an ineligible player in a match in March 2013.

You can read an article I wrote about this last week, it was titled, ''Tunisia Replaces Cape Verde In The WC Play-offs'' Please check the right hand side of your screen, you will see it, under archieve.

All the first matches will be played between October 11 - 15, while the second ones will be played between November 15 - 19. FIFA notified all the countries involved to submit the dates, venues and times of the matches by Friday this week.