World Cup 2026 Qualifiers: Ghana Likely To Face Cote d’Ivoire Or Mali In Today’s CAF Draw

With the draw scheduled for today, Ghana is likely to be assigned to a group that includes West African neighbors Cote d’Ivoire or Mali for the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifications.

The draw will take place on Thursday, July 13, 2023, in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, following the 45th Ordinary CAF General Assembly.

The Black Stars were seeded in Pot Two and will face any of the teams in Pot One, which includes both Cote d’Ivoire and Mali.

Matches between Ghana and neighboring countries are always tough and cagey, and the Black Stars are likely to face such a challenge during the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.

Ghana hopes to qualify for their fifth World Cup final, having previously competed in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2022 in Qatar last year.

Following the draw, there will be nine groups. Matches will be played in a home-and-away round-robin format, with the group winners automatically qualifying for the FIFA World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada in three years.

The four best runners-up from each group will then compete in a play-off stage to determine CAF’s representative at the FIFA play-off tournament.

The FIFA play-off tournament will include one team from each of FIFA’s six confederations, with the exception of UEFA, as well as one team from the host confederation (CONCACAF).

The FIFA/World Ranking will be used to seed two of the six teams. The seeded teams will face the winners of the first two knockout games between the four unseeded teams for a place in the FIFA World Cup.

The following are the seeded pots for today’s draw:

Pot One Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire

Pot Two Burkina Faso, Ghana, South Africa, Cape Verde, Congo DR, Guinea, Zambia, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea

Pot Three Uganda, Benin, Mauritania, Kenya, Congo, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Angola

Pot Four Mozambique, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Malawi, Libya

Pot Five Niger, Comoros, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Botswana, Liberia

Pot Six Lesotho, South Sudan, Mauritius, Chad, São Tomé and Príncipe, Djibouti, Seychelles, Eritrea, Somalia

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