The Malawi National Football Team will know their 2027 Africa Cup of Nations opponents this afternoon when the Confederation of African Football (CAF) holds the qualifying draw in Egypt.
The seedings for the draw were revealed yesterday with 48 countries divided into four levels for the composition of the groups and the Malawi National Football Team is in level three.
Football Association of Malawi (FAM) operations director Gomezgani Zakazaka said in an interview yesterday that they are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the draw.
| Courtesy of FAM
“We will be following the events as they unfold in Cairo, but we are ready to be paired with any team and we will prepare accordingly,” he said.
FAM set qualification for the continental showpiece as the main target for Flames coach Kallisto Pasuwa.
According to cafonline.com, there will be 12 qualifying groups with four teams each and the top two from each group will advance to the 24-team finals, to be co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda from June 10 to July 17 next year.
But today’s draw will be more complicated with three co-hosts in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda also participating in the preliminaries, even though they are guaranteed a berth at the finals.
It means that the first and second-placed teams in each of the nine groups not comprising a co-host qualifies for the finals. In the three groups in where the co-hosts will compete, the highest finisher that is not one of the three will qualify.
Meanwhile, CAF has ruled that the three co-hosts must be placed in separate groups.
The pot allocation for the draw is based on the latest Fifa rankings issued on April 1.
The draw will start with the placing of the 12 Level 4 teams and then work its way to finally placing the Level 1 teams, meaning a long wait for top-seeded nations to find out who they will be up against.
The qualifiers will be played over three match windows from September 21-October 6 and November 9-17 this year and then March 22-30 next year. Two qualifying matches per team will be played in each window.
The pots for the draw are as follows: Level 1: Morocco, Senegal, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Cameroon, DR Congo, Mali, South Africa and Burkina Faso.
Level 2: Cape Verde, Ghana, Guinea, Gabon, Uganda, Angola, Benin, Zambia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea and Comoros
Level 3: Kenya, Libya, Tanzania, Niger, Mauritania, Gambia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Togo, Malawi and Rwanda
Level 4: Zimbabwe, Guinea Bissau, Congo, Central African Republic, Liberia, Burundi, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Botswana, South Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia.
