BY Victor Akhidenor
The Super Eagles of Nigeria and 51 other countries will begin in June the quest of qualifying for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations in a yet to be named venue.
CAF executive committee approved a new format for the 31st edition of the AFCON qualifiers and for the first time, the host country will participate in the qualifying stages and the matches concerned will not be computed for points as they will be deemed as friendlies.
All the countries will be divided into 13 groups of 4 teams each.
The first from each group shall qualify for the final stage, as well as the best two runners-up, exclusive of the group of the host country, which only one team will qualify.
The draws for the groups shall be done on April 8, 2015 in Cairo, the day the host country of the 2017 edition will be announced.
Also, the executive committee has approved the format for the qualifiers of the 2018 FIFA World Cup to be hosted in Russia.
The competing teams will have to go through three preliminary rounds in order to bring the number of teams down to 20 so as to be able to constitute five (5) groups of four teams, where the first from each group will qualifier for the World Cup.
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