Explained: How the Afcon draw will work
by Gary Al-Smith 23 June 2012, 07:39
The draw for the final round of qualifying for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations will be held in a fortnight. On July 5 at Tanz Cafe-Emperors Palace, in Johannesburg, 30 teams split into two pots of 15 seeded teams and 15 unseeded teams will be paired off.
The winners over two legs will qualify for the finals. The qualifiers will be played in the weekends of September 7-9 and October 12-14.
The seeded teams are: Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Tunisia, Zambia and Egypt or Morocco.
Teams that have not been seeded are: Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Morocco or Central African Republic.
How the draw will work
Twenty nine of the thirty teams that will participate in the final round of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying have been determined.
Egypt or Central African Republic (CAR) will join the others after the second leg of their qualifier on June 30. The Wild Cats of CAR currently lead the Pharaohs 3-2 from the first leg after shocking the seven-time African champions away from home.
Seeding
There will be two pots of 15 teams each.
Based on their performances at the last three Nations Cup tournaments - 2008, 2010 and 2012 - Pot 1 will have the top seeded fifteen teams, while Pot 2 will have the other teams.
The points system adopted is as follows:
Winner - 7 points
Runner-up - 5 points
Losing semi-finalists - 3 points
Losing quarter-finalists - 2 points
Eliminated in 1st round - 1 point
However there will be a weighted coefficient on points for each of the last three tournaments as follows:
2012: Number of points x 3
2010: Number of points x 2
2008: Number of points x 1
In the event of a tie between two countries, the number of points won in all their games played in the last 3 final tournaments - 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and 0 for a match lost - will be applied.
POT 1
1. Zambia (26 pts)
2. Ghana (22 pts)
3. Cote d'Ivoire (22 pts)
4. Egypt (21 pts) - (if they qualify)
5. Mali (12 pts)
6. Tunisia (10 pts)
7. Cameroon (9 pts)
8. Angola (9 pts)
9. Gabon (8 pts)
10. Nigeria (8 pts)
11. Sudan (7 pts)
12. Equatorial Guinea (6 pts)
13. Algeria (6 pts)
14. Guinea (5 pts)
15. Burkina Faso (5 pts)
Morocco (4 pts) (6 pts) - (Pot 1 if CAR qualify; Pot 2 if Egypt qualify)
POT 2
1. Senegal (4 pts) (2 pts)
2. Libya (3 pts)
3, Niger (3 pts)
4. Botswana (3 pts)
5. Malawi (2 pts)
6. Mozambique (2 pts)
7. Togo (2 pts)
8. Cape Verde (0 pts)
9. Central African Republic (0 pts - if qualify)
10. Congo DR (0 pts)
11. Ethiopia (0 pts)
12. Liberia (0 pts)
13. Sierra Leone (0 pts)
14. Uganda (0 pts)
15. Zimbabwe (0 pts)
