Nigeria’s female national team, Super Falcons have been set up for a knock-out battle with The Black Queens of Ghana in qualifiers for the Africa Women Cup of Nations (AWCON), megasportsarena.com reports.
This is sequel to the outcome of Monday’s draw ceremony, which confirmed that the Falcons will have to go past the Black Queens to qualify for the second round of the AWCON 2022 qualifying tournament.
The overcoming team from that fixture will then clash with the winners of another first round tie between Niger Republic and Cote d’Ivoire, from which the better side will move on to join hosts Morocco at the tournament proper.
A new qualifying format has been adopted, as a total of 45 countries have entered for the race to Maroc 2022, while the final tournament has also been expanded from eight to 12 teams, but the challenge looks daunting for the Falcons, who are record nine times champions and won the last edition hosted by Ghana in 2018.
Also from mMonday’s draw, in the qualifiers for the 2022 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, which will be hosted by Costa Rica, Nigeria’s Falconets were drawn bye into round two, where they will play the winner between Equatorial Guinea and Central Africa Republic.
In the draw for the U17 FIFA Women’s World Cup that will be hosted by India, the Flamingos have been drawn to the second round where they await the winner of the first round fixture pitching Democratic Republic of Congo ith Rwanda.
Second round games for the Falconets will hold betwen 23rd to 25th September and 7th to 9th October, with the third round matches fixed for December, while those for the cadet cadre will take place in March 2022, all of which were outlined by top shots of Confedration of African Football (CAF).
A report on the continent’s soccer governing body’s website read: “CAF Headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, hosted the draw for the qualification series, that saw a record of 45 member associations taking part in the qualifiers’ series.
“Morocco, the host country of the final tournament who automatically qualified as hosts. So, 44 teams will take part in the qualifiers. It will be the first edition organized under the format of 12 teams.
“CAF Senior Manager of Women Football & Futsal Heba Sarwat conducted the draw, assisted by Egyptian footballer Nadine Ghazy.”
