>
FIFA announced on Monday that all is set for the qualifiers for Qatar 2022 World Cup to begin. In a media release, the world football body reeled out the qualifier formats for all the confederations including CAF, saying that a total of 204 countries will be competing to be among the 32 nations in the World Cup. Qatar as host, has already qualified.
All the qualifiers would have ended by March 2022. The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 will run from November 21 to December 18, 2022.
It said CAF qualifiers for Africa will begin in September 2019. Twenty-eight African nations will battle for the five slots available for the continent.
The format for CAF is as follows:
Round 1 (September 2019): 28 member associations to play knockout matches, with the 14 winners advancing to round 2.
Round 2 (March 2020 – October 2021): the 14 winners of round 1 to join 26 other member associations to form ten groups of four member associations, with the ten group winners advancing to round 3.
Round 3 (November 2021): the ten group winners of round 2 to play knockout matches, with the five winners qualifying for the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Below are the breakdown of slots available for each continent:
UEFA (Europe) – 13
CAF (Africa) – 5
AFC (Asia) – 4.5
CONMEBOL (South America) – 4.5
CONCACAF (North America, Central America & Caribbean) – 3.5
OFC (Oceania) – 0.5
NOTE: 4.5 means that the confederation could end up with four or five slots. The fifth country (best loser) will go for an international play-off.