African qualifiers: All teams did not achieve the full score
When the draw for the 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations takes place on Thursday in Abidjan, the African continent will take a new step towards this edition, preceded by exciting qualifiers in which most of the continent’s teams participated to produce the best 24 teams to participate in the finals.
The qualifying qualifiers for the tournament were held over a period of about 18 months, starting from March 2022, until last September.
According to the German News Agency, the qualifiers witnessed 141 matches distributed between the preliminary round and the group stage, which concluded its activities recently and decided the 24 places in the finals, noting that the Ivorian national team, whose country is hosting the tournament, also participated in the qualifiers despite qualifying as the representative of the host country.
There is one match remaining in the qualifiers between the teams of Morocco and Liberia in the eleventh group of the qualifiers, and it will be held days after the draw, in light of its postponement from last September due to the earthquake that struck Morocco, which prevented the match from being held.
The result of the match does not affect the position of the two teams in the qualifiers, as the Moroccan team officially qualified and the Liberian team exited the qualifiers, regardless of the outcome of the match.
The qualifiers began with the preliminary round, in which the lowest-ranked teams on the continent participated, to complete the 48 seats that participated in the main round (group stage).
The 48 teams were divided into 12 groups, with four teams in each group, with the first and second teams in each group at the end of the qualifiers qualifying directly to the finals.
The African continent is on a date with a new step for this version (CAF)
The teams of Kenya and Zimbabwe were placed in the qualifiers despite the suspension imposed on the Football Association in both countries by the International Federation of Football (FIFA), but neither team participated in the qualifiers in light of this suspension, so that the group of each of them consisted of only three teams.
Throughout the qualifiers, no team succeeded in achieving the full mark in the qualifiers. No team won all the matches it played in its group in the qualifiers.
The Algerian team was the most successful, as it won five matches, tied one match, and did not suffer any defeat, while the Egyptian, Nigerian and Mali teams each won five matches and lost one match.
In addition to the Algerian team, the qualifiers witnessed two other undefeated teams: the Ghanaian team, which topped Group E with three wins and three draws, and the defending champion Senegal, which topped Group Twelfth with four wins and two draws.
During the group stage, the teams of Sao Tome and Principe in Group One and Lesotho in Group Eight were the worst in terms of results, as each of them lost in five matches and tied in one match, limiting the balance of each of them in the qualifiers to one point from six matches.
The Liberia national team also scored one point from three matches it played in Group Eleven, due to the suspension of the Zimbabwe national team, and it remains for it to have the postponed match against the Moroccan national team.
In terms of goals, the qualifiers witnessed 345 goals in 141 matches, with an average of 2.45 goals per match. Among the goals were 29 goals in 10 matches in the preliminary round, and 316 goals in 131 matches in the group stage.
Nigerian Victor Osimhen, the Italian Napoli striker, topped the list of top scorers in the qualifiers, with ten goals out of 22 goals scored by the Nigerian team in Group A, to be the highest scoring team in the qualifiers.
On the other hand, Madagascar in Group Five and Lesotho in Group Eight were the teams that scored the least in the qualifiers, with one goal each.
Saotomoy and Principe had the worst defense ever in the group stage, conceding 26 times in six matches in the first group.
Despite some surprises in the results of the matches, the qualifiers did not witness major surprises at the level of the qualifying teams from each group, as the qualification process in most groups went largely according to expectations, and the qualifiers were free of the exit of the large teams with enormous experience in the tournament, contrary to what was the case. This is the case in some versions held in recent years.
At the end of the qualifiers, the qualifying cards for the finals went to Nigeria and Guinea Bissau (Group A), Burkina Faso and Cape Verde (Group Two), Cameroon and Namibia (Group Three), Egypt and Guinea (Group Four), Ghana and Angola (Group Five), Algeria and Tanzania. (Group Six), Mali and Gambia (Group Seven), Zambia and Ivory Coast (Group Eight), Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mauritania (Group Nine), Tunisia and Equatorial Guinea (Group Ten), South Africa and Morocco (Group Eleven), and Senegal and Mozambique (Group XII).
2023-10-10 19:28:01
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