By Omar Jatta
This evening, The Gambia will be among 48 countries from across the African continent to be included in the draw for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualification rounds.
The draw, which will be held at the Super Sports studio in the South African capital Johannesburg at 17.30 GMT, will be conducted with the assistance of two former winners of the elite competition, former South African captain Lucas Radebe and Ivory Coast forward Salomon Kalou.
The teams for the draw will be seeded according to their latest Fifa ranking released on 31 March, which meant the Scorpions, who were among six teams that made the draw via the preliminary qualifiers after seeing off Chad to join Botswana, South Sudan, Lesotho, Eswatini and Sao Tome for tomorrow’s draw, will be pooled in Pot3, and will be drawn against the 42 other countries exempted from the preliminary qualifiers. The teams will be split into 12 group (A-L) of four (4) teams each, and the top two from each pool will qualify for the 34th edition of the elite African competition in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 2023.
The draw will start from Pot 4 then to 3, 2, 1 respectively and the teams drawn will then participate in the group stage qualifiers scheduled to kick-off in June.
