Africa Soccer Cosafa Cup draw set for Tuesday in South Africa

The draw for Southern Africa’s biggest senior national football teams’ competition, Cosafa Cup, will take place on June 14 in South Africa.

The Council for Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) has confirmed the schedule for the draw which will take place at Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.

Cosafa secretariat says the tournament will run from July 5 to 17 in the same coastal city of South Africa where Senegal will be guest participants.

Zimbabwe will be the only Southern Africa team to miss the tournament due to their ongoing FIFA suspension.

There will be two phases to the draw. The first sees the eight lowest positioned sides according to the latest FIFA Rankings contesting a first round pool stage. They will be split into two groups with four sides each,” Cosafa says.

The top teams in each pool advance to the quarterfinals, where they join by the six higher ranked sides. The draw for this round will also be completed on Tuesday.”

The competition continues in a knockout format after that, with the losing quarterfinalists to play in the Plate tournament.

The seeded teams for the first pool stage are Malawi, Angola, Comoros Islands and Lesotho, while the unseeded sides are Botswana, Eswatini, Mauritius and Seychelles. They will be drawn one by one in Groups A and B until those are full.

The draw will then switch to the quarterfinals, where the four seeded sides are Senegal, South Africa, Zambia and Madagascar. The other teams that enter at this stage are Namibia and Mozambique, with the final two teams represented by the winners of Groups A and B.

The seeded sides in the quarterfinals cannot play each other in this round, so there will be no repeat of last season’s final where South Africa beat Senegal on penalties.

The tournament will be excellent preparation for both the African Nations Championship and Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers that will be played over the next few months.

The 20 previous editions of the competition have seen some great performances and incredible games that have been written into the folklore of Southern African football, but only five nations can claim to have lifted the coveted trophy.

Zimbabwe (six wins) lead the way, followed by Zambia, South Africa (five each), Angola (three) and Namibia (one).

Mozambique, Malawi and Botswana have all twice been finalists, but ended up on the losing side on both occasions. Lesotho are the only other team to reach the decider.-Cosafa

FIRST ROUND POOL STAGE DRAW
Seeded teams
Malawi
Angola
Comoros
Lesotho

Unseeded teams
Botswana
Eswatini
Mauritius
Seychelles

QUARTERFINAL DRAW
Seeded teams
Senegal
South Africa
Zambia
Madagascar

Unseeded teams
Namibia
Mozambique
Winner Group A
Winner Group B


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