Qualifying draw puts all eyes on World Cup

The Black Stars are among the 30 African countries for the 2006 World Cup qualifying competition draw to be held in Germany today.

Ghana will draw one team from each of the other five groups of seeds and play them at home and away with the group winners qualifying for the finals in Germany.

A glance at the seeds (see below for table) confirms Ghana face a potentially awkward path to the finals as she seeks her first appearance at the quadrennial international football showcase.

Ghana certainly would not relish being grouped with Camroon or South Africa (first seed), Egypt or Morocco (second seed), Ivory Coast (third), Liberia (fifth) and Benin or Rwanda (sixth).

A much kinder draw for Ghana would be the Tunisia (first), Mali (second), Kenya (third), Malawi (fifth) and Botswana (sixth).

The matches also serve as qualifiers for the 2006 African Nations Cup in Egypt with the top three in each pool plus the host country securing berths at the tournament.

Host Germany said preparations for the world's biggest single-sport event were going according to plan and stand-ins were already practising for Friday's draw at the Festhalle. The draw will set up qualifying groups for 156 teams which will play more than 850 qualifiers over the next two years.

The crowd of 3,500 at the draw will include Formula One great Michael Schumacher and Senegal's singer Youssou N'Dour along with a host of stars from the worlds of soccer and politics.

The draw will be handled by former soccer stars such as Cha Bum-kun of South Korea, Japan's Yasuhiko Okudera, Ghana's Abedi Pele, and New Zealand's Wynton Rufer, who all played in the Bundesliga.

Germany qualifies automatically for the 2006 finals and defending champion Brazil has already played four games in the South American qualifying round.

Overall, close to 200 countries entered the competition, double the teams which tried to qualify for the 1974 World Cup in West Germany. Some 40 have been eliminated in pre-qualifying.

The draw, covering all continents except South America, begins at 5pm GMT in the German city of Frankfurt and is scheduled to last about two hours.

Pools

Pool A: Senegal, South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria, Tunisia
Pool B: Egypt, Morocco, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali
Pool C: Algeria, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Kenya, Burkina Faso
Pool D: Ghana, Angola, Libya, Togo, Guinea
Pool E: Malawi, Uganda, Gabon, Sudan, Liberia
Pool F: Rwanda, Congo, Botswana, Benin, Cape Verde Islands