World Cup 2010 qualifiers - Nigeria, South Africa to battle it out.

From Click Afrique

In a glittering ceremony in Durban South Africa, FIFA held the draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It was a memorable night for all and provided some mouth-watering match ups.....


Durban on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast yesterday played host to the draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. As the tens of millions of football fans across the globe watched, draw assistants George Weah, Ali Daei, Marcel Desailly, Kasey Keller, Kaizer Motaung, Abedi Pele, Doreen Nabwire, Jomo Sono, Lucas Radebe and Christian Karembeu literally had the fate of 170 nations in their hands.

The African draw intriguingly doubles as the draw for the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola. So although South Africa qualifies automatically for the 2010 World Cup as hosts, it needed to also navigate through the qualifying series to win a spot at Angola 2010.

The African zone of the qualifiers places the 48 teams into 12 groups of 4 teams with the group winners and eight best runners up advancing into five groups of four and the winners of these groups go through to the World Cup Final proper.

For the African Cup of Nations qualifiers the top three teams in each of the five groups and Angola will qualify for the competition.

The drew threw up some intriguing matches particularly for hosts South Africa who drew continental power house Nigeria in group 4, while 2002 finalists Senegal will face Algeria finalists from 1982 and 1986.

The twelve groups for the initial phase of the African Qualifiers are:

Group 1 CameroonCape Verde IslandsTanzaniaMauritius
Group 2 Guinea ZimbabweNamibia Kenya
Group 3AngolaBeninUgandaNiger
Group 4NigeriaSouth AfricaEquatorial GuineaSierra Leone
Group 5GhanaLibyaGabonLesotho
Group 6 Senegal Algeria Liberia Gambia
Group 7 Cote d IvoireMozambiqueBotswanaMadagascar
Group 8 Morocco EthiopiaRwanda Mauritania
Group 9Tunisia Burkina FasoBurundi Seychelles
Group 10 Mali Congo Sudan Chad
Group 11 Togo Zambia Eritrea Swaziland
Group 12Egypt Congo DRMalawi Djibouti

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