2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualification

2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualification
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.
The preliminary round draw took place on 21 January 2022, 16:30 WAT (UTC+1), in Douala, Cameroon.
Schedule
The schedule of the qualifying tournament was as follows.
Preliminary round
The twelve lowest-ranked teams were drawn into six ties to be played in home-and-away two-legged format. The six winners advanced to the group stage to join the 42 teams which entered directly.
Group stage
Draw
The group stage draw took place on 19 April 2022 at 19:30 SAST (UTC+2) at SuperSport Broadcasting Studios in Johannesburg, South Africa. 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). 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).
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.
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. 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. 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.
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):
Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
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;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Away goals scored in all group matches;
Drawing of lots
Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Group E
Group F
Group G
Group H
Group I
Group J
Group K
Group L
Goalscorers
Qualified teams
The following teams qualified for the final tournament.
1 Bold indicates champions for that year. Italics indicates hosts for that year.
References
2023
Qualification
2022 in African football
2023 in African football