The African section of the

2018 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification process was a series of tournaments organised by the six FIFA confederations to decide 31 of the 32 teams which would play in the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with Russia qualifying automatically as hosts. All 210 ...

acted as qualifiers for the

2018 FIFA World Cup The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded the hosting righ ...

, held in Russia, for national teams which were members of the

Confederation of African Football The Confederation of African Football, or CAF for short (french: link=yes, Confédération Africaine de Football, ar, link=yes, الاتحاد الأفريقي لكرة القدم, al-Ittiḥād al-Afrīqī li-Kurat al-Qadam), is the administ ...

(CAF). A total of five slots in the final tournament were available for CAF teams. The CAF Executive Committee approved the format for the qualifiers of the 2018 FIFA World Cup on 14 January 2015, with three preliminary rounds before a final group stage featuring 20 teams. The number of preliminary rounds was reduced to two, based on information provided by FIFA in early July 2015.

Format

The qualification structure was as follows: *First round: 26 teams, ranked 28–53, played home-and-away over two legs. The 13 winners advanced to the

second round The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each ...

. *Second round: 40 teams, ranked 1–27 and 13 first round winners, played home-and-away over two legs. The 20 winners advanced to the

third round Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * Hig ...

. *Third round: 20 teams which had advanced from the second round were divided into five groups of four teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The winners of each group qualified for the

Entrants

All 54 FIFA-affiliated football associations from CAF entered qualification. However,

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

were expelled from the competition on 12 March 2015 due to their failure to pay former coach José Claudinei a severance fee, a decision that the

Zimbabwe Football Association The Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) is the governing body of football in Zimbabwe. It is responsible for organising national football competitions in Zimbabwe and managing the Zimbabwe national football teams. The current ZIFA was founded i ...

unsuccessfully appealed against. The July 2015 FIFA Rankings were used to seed the teams for the first two rounds, both of which were drawn in Russia on 25 July 2015. (World rankings shown in brackets) Note: Niger had to enter the first round as they had fewer FIFA ranking points (345.31) than Benin (345.46) and Libya (345.35). In the FIFA World Rankings, teams share the same ranking if their ranking points round to the same whole number.

Schedule

The schedule of the competition was as follows.

First round

The draw for the first round was held as part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Preliminary Draw on 25 July 2015, starting 18:00 MSK (

UTC+3 UTC+03:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +03:00. In areas using this time offset, the time is three hours later than the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Following the ISO 8601 standard, a time with this offset would be wr ...

), at the Konstantinovsky Palace in

Strelna Strelna ( rus, Стре́льна, p=ˈstrʲelʲnə) is a municipal settlement in Petrodvortsovy District of the federal city of Saint Petersburg, Russia, about halfway between Saint Petersburg proper and Petergof, and overlooking the shore o ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Russia.

Second round

The draw for the second round was held as part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Preliminary Draw on 25 July 2015, starting 18:00 MSK (

), at the Konstantinovsky Palace in

, Russia.

Third round

The draw for the third round was held on 24 June 2016, 17:00 EET (

UTC+2 UTC+02:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +02:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2020-11-08T23:41:45+02:00. This time is used in: As standard time (year-round) ''Principal cities: Cairo, Pretoria, C ...

), at the CAF headquarters in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metr ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

Groups

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Group E

Qualified teams

The following five teams qualified for the final tournament.

Top goalscorers

;5 goals * Préjuce Nakoulma *

Mohamed Salah Mohamed Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly ( ar, محمد صلاح حامد محروس غالي, ; born 15 June 1992), also known as Mo Salah, is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a forward for club Liverpool and captains the Egyp ...

;4 goals * Islam Slimani * Fiston Abdul Razak * Firmin Ndombe Mubele *

William Jebor William Jebor (born 10 November 1991) is a Liberian professional footballer who plays as a striker for the Liberia national team, for which he serves as captain. He is the second Liberian to be an Africa Footballer of the Year nominee, after ...

* Khalid Boutaïb * Moussa Maâzou * Farouk Miya * Naby Keïta

Fan behaviour

After Morocco qualified for the tournament with a 2–0 victory over Ivory Coast, the celebrations by the Moroccan community in Brussels turned into a riot with cars burnt, shops looted by some 300 rioters and 20 police officers injured. Firefighters sent to put out the fires were also attacked by the rioters.

Notes

References

External links

*
Qualifiers – Africa
FIFA.com
2018 FIFA World Cup Russia - Qualifiers
CAFonline.com {{2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers Caf FIFA World Cup qualification (CAF) 2015 in African football 2016 in African football 2017 in African football