Chronicle Editor
Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
EXACTLY 2 150 days after their previous campaign in the World Cup, the Warriors will know opponents for the qualifier when the Caf World Cup Qatar 2022 draw is conducted in Egypt today.
Teams involved in the first qualifying round are Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Seychelles, Sao Tome, Chad, South Sudan, Gambia, Mauritius, Liberia, Ethiopia, Comoros, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Togo, Malawi, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania.
The Fifa World Ranking of July 2019 will be used for the seeding of round one and Zimbabwe occupy 29th position, which makes them fall into the preliminary round bracket.
“The 14 winners will join the continent’s top-ranked 26 sides, who have been exempted from the initial round of qualifiers. Those 40 teams will then be split into 10 groups of four for the second qualifying round. The 10 winners of those groups will then be drawn against each other in home-and-away fixtures, with the five victors advancing to Qatar 2022,” said Fifa in a statement.
The knockout matches will begin in September. The Warriors were last in World Cup action when they drew 1-1 with Mozambique at the National Sports Stadium on September 8, 2013.
That campaign ended on a calamitous note, as the Warriors were winless in their group that had Egypt, Guinea and Mozambique. They ended at the bottom of the group with just two points.
Zimbabwe were spectators for the 2018 Russia World Cup campaign after the country was expelled from participating in the qualifying matches for failing to pay former coach Jose Claudinei Georgini.
Georgini, popularly known as Valinhos, won an appeal to Fifa over an outstanding $60 000 salary. That decision to expel the Warriors was announced by Fifa on March 12, 2015.
Zimbabwe came within a month from being expelled from participating in the 2022 World Cup qualifying until former Zifa president Phillip Chiyangwa, with the help of businessman Wicknell Chivayo, raised $160 000 that was needed to pay off Belgian coach Tom Saintfeit.
Saintfeit was deported in the week he conducted his only training session with the Warriors, for breach of immigration laws after working without a work permit.
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