Bright Star Football Team

South Sudan’ national team Bright Star will learn who they will face in the 2022 world cup qualification on 29 July 2019.

This was confirmed as the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced on Monday that the draw of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers is to be held on July 29 in Cairo, Egypt.

“The draw will be held at CAF headquarter in the 6th of October city in Giza,” CAF said in a statement.

In 2015, Bright Stars played to a 1-1 draw with Mauritania in the 2018 world cup qualifiers in Juba and eventually got knocked out from the preliminary round when they lost 5-1 in the return league.

28 teams including South Sudan’ Bright Stars, will participate in the preliminary round, while the 26 highest ranked teams, under the FIFA rankings, will be exempted from this round.

Some of the 26 highest ranked teams include; newly crowned African champions Algeria, runners up Senegal, Cameroon, Tunisia, Morocco, DR Congo, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea, South Africa, Cape Verde, Zambia, Benin, Gabon, Congo, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Zimbabwe and Libya.

14 teams from the preliminary round joining the top 26 top-ranked teams to make up 40 teams for the group stages.

The 40 teams will be grouped into four different groups and the winners of the group will advance to the knockout stage.

The ten teams from the knockout stage will be divided into two levels based on the FIFA ranking. The 5 highest ranked teams will face the lowest-ranked ones.

The winners of the first and second legs on aggregate will qualify for 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Egypt’s national team will not participate in the preliminary round as CAF announced earlier that the 26 highest ranked teams, under the FIFA rankings, will be exempted from this round.