In the First Round, 42 teams were paired 2-by-2 and played knockout matches home-and-away. The 21 winners would advance to the Second Round where they would meet the other 9 teams that qualify directly to the Second Round. Those teams are the 5 teams that qualified for the 2002 World Cup Finals (Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia) and the 4 highest-ranking teams in FIFA world rankings of 25 June 2003 (Congo DR, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Morocco).