Cranes to learn 2018 World Cup qualifying opponents

Uganda Cranes will get to know their opponents in the third round of African Zone 2018 Russia World Cup qualifiers when they draws are conducted at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt later today.

The preliminary stage competition will involve 20 teams drawn into four groups of five. The teams will play each other home and away on a round-robin basis.

The seeded teams and the four pots for the draw have been defined on the basis of a special edition of the FIFA World Ranking for African teams dated early this month.

The ranking put Uganda in 16th position out of 20 countries from the African zone. The ranking came up with pots and the five seeds as follows: Pot 1: Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, Pot 2: Cape Verde Islands, Egypt, Congo DR, Nigeria, Mali, Pot 3: Cameroon, Morocco, Guinea, South Africa, Congo and Pot 4: Uganda, Burkina Faso, Zambia, Gabon, Libya

The 20 teams will be drawn into five round-robin, home-and-away groups of four teams each. All the eventual five group winners will automatically qualify for Russia 2018.

The teams in Pot 4 will be drawn first and will be placed in Group A, and its exact position in the group will be determined by a ball drawn from a second pot that will contain four balls with the position numbers 1-4.

The team drawn second from Pot 4 will be placed in Group B, and its position in the group will also be determined by a ball drawn from the second pot.

The team drawn third will be placed in Group C, and its position drawn from the second pot. The team drawn fourth will be placed in Group D, and its position drawn from the second pot.

Finally, the team in the last ball in Pot 4 will be placed in Group E, and its position will again be drawn from the second pot.

This very same procedure will then be applied for Pot 3, then for Pot 2, and finally for Pot 1. When the last ball containing the name of the final team in Pot 1 has been drawn and its position in Group E has been confirmed by drawing the last remaining ball in the second pot, the draw will be concluded.