By Mark Baber
October 12 – Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, three of Africa’s most populous nations which have been underperforming on the international football stage, unconvincingly made it through to the second round of qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup 2018 following their 1st round 2nd leg matches this weekend.
Tanzania earnt themselves a difficult 2nd round game against Africa’s top-ranked side Algeria despite losing 1-0 to Malawi – by dint of their 2-0 win in the 1st leg.
Ethiopia, Africa’s 2nd most populous country, overturned a 1-0 deficit from the first leg to go through after a 3-0 victory against Sao Tome e Principe, a nation with a total population of just 194,000. They now have a difficult tie against Congo in the next round.
Despite having won the first leg against Mauritius away from home with a 5-2 score line, Kenya could not score against their Indian Ocean rivals at home, much to the openly expressed disappointment of their fans. They will now face Cape Verde in the second round.
There are five slots available for the 53 African nations in the draw (Zimbabwe having been thrown out of the competition due to non-payment of their manager). The 13 winners from the first round matches go through to the second round which includes 27 teams who received a bye due to their position in the FIFA world ranking. The winning 20 teams from the two legged second round games will go into five groups of four teams with the winners of each group qualifying for the World Cup in Russia.
Between them, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia represent 15.88% of the African population (whilst their defeated rivals represent just 1.54%). However none of these teams has ever made it through to the World Cup finals and, it has to be said, the odds are heavily stacked against any of them reaching them this time either.
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