20 African Teams Left in World Cup 2010 Qualifying

October 14th, 2008 | by: Daryl |

African World Cup qualifying is a tough old business. In 2010 we started with 53 teams, a big number that has to be whittled down to just six teams (including hosts South Africa who automatically qualify). So essentially you have 53 teams competing for just five tickets to World Cup 2010.

And with 2010 being the first World Cup on the African continent, competition to be there was fierce. The Second Round of CAF World Cup qualifying is over, and already some big names have fallen.

Angola missed out, so we won’t be enjoying the big man little man strike partnership of Manucho and Flavio at World Cup 2010 (though we’ll see them when Angola hosts the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in January of that year.) World Cup 2002 quarterfinalists Senegal are out too after their 1-1 draw with Gambia, and coach Lamine Ndiaye has payed for the failure with his job.

There are just 20 teams left to fight for the five qualification spots. They are:

Cameroon
Egypt
Ghana
Nigeria
Cote d’Ivoire
Guinea
Morocco
Tunisia
Mali
Algeria
Burkina Faso
Gabon
Zambia
Kenya
Benin
Rwanda
Togo
Mozambique
Sudan
Malawi

Those 20 teams will be drawn into five groups of four on the 22nd October 2008.

From there, only the winners of each group will qualify for World Cup 2010, which is pretty harsh but the only way to go with so few qualifying spots to share between so many teams. Good luck to all of them.

Latest odds from Paddy Power on African teams going all the way and winning the trophy have Cote d’Ivoire at 33-1, Cameroon 50-1 and South Africa at a very optimistic 66-1. Full World Cup 2010 odds on Bet Offside.

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mele419

and those first five,
Cameroon
Egypt
Ghana
Nigeria
Cote d’Ivoire
will be the ones that make it (depending on how the groups are seeded. It’d be sad to see one (or more) of these really good footballing nations knocked out because of crappy seeding.)
Joe

Also, it makes it one of the few times we can assuredly say that the hosts of an event wouldn’t have qualified had they not been hosts.. Angola for the Africa Cup of Nations and South Africa for the World Cup 2010.
mouhsine

when will the draw be held and at what time (GMT) and where can i watch it live?
sscouser

Hey Mele419, if the top seeded teams (POT 1) don’t make it to the WC it wont be because of crappy seeding it will be because they are not good enough. The teams in Pot 1 will be leaders of each group so they will face teams in Pots 2, 3 and 4. If they dont top their group they should blame themselves. http://malawi.worldcupblog.org/

Mouhsine, the drwa will be held on October 22 in Zurich.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/7669189.stm
http://www.radiomariamw.net andrew kauwa

Cameroon
Egypt
Ghana
Nigeria
Cote d’Ivoire
if you think that these are top five in Africa then you have written in water,and where is SENEGAL .thus according to the draw malawi will play against Cot d’ Ivoire,if this team underarrate malawi they wiil cry foul ask the pharioals they will tell you what they had met.