The drawing pots for the African qualifiers of the 2022 FIFA World Cup were confirmed ahead of the draw on Tuesday, and Bafana Bafana could find themselves in a tricky group.
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The draw will take in Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday, at 19:00 local time. The 14 first-round winners will join the draw alongside the 26 highest-ranked African nations from the July 2019 FIFA rankings.
The 40 teams will be drawn into 10 groups of four, with only the winners of each group advancing to the next round.
The group phase starts in March 2020, during the first international break of the year, and ends in October 2021.
The 10 group winners will then be drawn into five two-legged knockout ties to be played in November 2021.
Click through the gallery below to see the African Team of the Year, as voted by Bafana players:
Senegal (20th) will enter the draw as highest-ranked African nation, followed by Tunisia (27th) and Nigeria (31st), while Algeria (35th), Morocco (43rd) and Ghana (47th) are also among the world's top 50 footballing nations.
South Africa were placed in pot two, alongside Burkina Faso, Guinea, Uganda, Cape Verde, Gabon, Benin, Zambia, Congo and Ivory Coast, all of whom Bafana will not face.
However, there could be a potentially strong group involving 2019 AFCON champions Algeria, South Africa, Madagascar and either of Togo or Angola, who both qualified for the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Another tricky group could see AFCON 2019 runners-up Senegal being drawn alongside, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Malawi, who are the highest-ranked nation in pot four.
Here are the full drawing pots, as confirmed by CAF:
Pot 1: Algeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, Egypt, Cameroon, Mali, DR Congo, Nigeria
Pot 2: Burkina Faso, South Africa, Guinea, Uganda, Cape Verde, Gabon, Benin, Zambia, Congo, Ivory Coast
Pot 3: Madagascar, Mauritania, Libya, Mozambique, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Niger, Central African Republic, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau
Pot 4: Malawi, Angola, Togo, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Djibouti
Read: UEFA Announce 2019 Team Of The Year, Salah Snubbed
Do you think South Africa can qualify for the 2022 World Cup? Have your say in the comments section below.
