The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualification matches were organised by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to decide the participating teams of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast, the 34th edition of the international men's football championship of Africa. A total of 24 teams qualified to play in the final tournament, including Ivory Coast, who qualified automatically as hosts.
Entrants
All 54 CAF member associations entered to the competition. The seeding was based on the FIFA World Ranking from 23 December 2021 with teams ranked 1st to 42nd received a bye to the qualifying group stage, while the teams ranked 43rd to 54th had to participate in the preliminary round.[1]
The preliminary round draw took place on 21 January 2022, 16:30 WAT (UTC+1), in Douala, Cameroon.[2]
The twelve lowest-ranked teams were drawn into six ties to be played in home-and-away two-legged format.[4] The six winners advanced to the group stage to join the 42 teams which entered directly.
The group stage draw took place on 19 April 2022 at 19:30 SAST (UTC+2) at SuperSport Broadcasting Studios in Johannesburg, South Africa.[5][6] The 48 national teams involved were divided into twelve groups of four each (from Group A to Group L), which consisted of the 42 teams which entered directly, in addition to the six winners of the preliminary round. The 48 national teams had previously been seeded into four pots of twelve each based on the March 2022 FIFA World Rankings (shown in parentheses).[7] Teams in bold qualified for the final tournament.
The draw started with pot 4 and ended with pot 1; each team drawn was assigned into the first available group alphabetically (A–L) and within the group was placed in the position that corresponded to it according to its pot (i.e. position 1 for teams from pot 1, position 2 for teams from pot 2, position 3 for teams from pot 3 and position 4 for teams from pot 4).[6]
The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations hosts, Ivory Coast, participated in the qualifiers despite the team being guaranteed a spot in the finals, which meant only the best ranked team within their group apart from Ivory Coast qualified for the finals. The Ivory Coast matches and results counted in determining the qualification of the other teams from their group.[6]
Kenya and Zimbabwe were included in the draw despite being temporarily suspended by FIFA from all international football activities. In order to avoid a potential situation where one group contained only two valid teams, the aforementioned sides could thus not be drawn in the same group.[6] On 23 May 2022, CAF announced that both teams had been disqualified from the qualifiers as a result of their suspensions not being lifted by FIFA.[8] Thus, their groups were composed of only three teams, with the group winners and runners-up qualifying to the finals.
The draw ceremony was conducted by the CAF Director of Competitions Samson Adamu, with assistance by former South Africa defender Lucas Radebe and former Ivory Coast striker Salomon Kalou.[9]
Tiebreakers
The teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss). If tied on points, tiebreakers were applied in the following order (Regulations Article 14):
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Away goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams were tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams were still tied, all head-to-head criteria above was reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
^CAF awarded DR Congo a 3–0 win as a result of Mauritania fielding an ineligible player, Khadim Diaw, after the match had ended in a 1–1 draw. Diaw failed to follow the proper procedure for switching national teams after previously representing Senegal during the 2020 African Nations Championship qualification.[10]
^CAF awarded Benin a 3–0 win as a result of Rwanda fielding an ineligible player, Kevin Muhire, after the match had ended in a 1–1 draw. Muhire failed to serve a one-game ban after receiving two yellow cards in the qualifying competition.[11]
Goalscorers
There were 319 goals scored in 132 matches, for an average of 2.42 goals per match.
Notes: The 2021 and 2023 tournaments were actually held in 2022 and 2024 respectively. • There were no 1957 and 1959 qualifications as places were given by invitation only. • The "finals" articles for 1959 and 1976 are about the decisive matches of final group stages. Football in Africa portal