16th June, 2013
The Super Eagles of Nigeria will be one of the seeded five teams in the last qualifying round of the 2014 World Cup, if they maintain their current top 5 placement in Africa when the draws are made in September.
According to FIFA, the September rankings will be used for the seeding of the final round of the qualifiers.
While announcing the procedure for the draws, FIFA World Cup Local Organising Committee, says top five teams in the rankings will be seeded for the draws, which will be held on 16 September at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.
All the 10 winners of the on-going qualifiers will advance to the final qualifying round where teams will be paired off against each other in a two-legged playoff.
The five winners of the playoff games will represent the continent at next year’s World Cup in Brazil.
The current top 10 rankings are as follows: 1- Ivory Coast, 2- Ghana, 3- Mali, 4- Nigeria, 5- Algeria, 6- Tunisia, 7- Zambia, 8- Burkina Faso, 9- Central African Republic and 10- South Africa.
With this procedure, it means that the Eagles will not be drawn against Ghana and Ivory Coast, should they make it to the last round of the qualifiers.