Africa’s top-ranked soccer team, Cameroon, were handed a tricky route to the 2010 World Cup after being drawn on Wednesday against Morocco, Gabon and Togo in Group A of the continent’s third and final qualifying stage.
The group will see Cameroon’s German coach Otto Pfister pitting his wits against the Togo side which he coached through a chaotic 2006 World Cup.
“It is indeed a very difficult group. We are the favorites on paper, but this does not mean too much. We cannot afford to underestimate any team as they are all strong,” Pfister told FIFA.com.
“Togo have two or three really good players and, of course, have the experience of being part of the previous World Cup in Germany,” said the coach who was in charge of the Sparrowhawks at the 2006 tournament.
The group also brings together former French stars Roger Lemerre and Alain Giresse who now coach Morocco and Gabon respectively.
“It’s a very exciting group, and the fact that Cameroon are neighbors of ours also adds to the spice,” Giresse said following the draw.
Only the five group winners will progress to the final tournament along with 2010 World Cup hosts South Africa, who will be the first African country to stage football’s biggest event.
The groups are also being used to determine qualification for the next African Nations Cup, also in 2010, with the three top sides in each group going through along with hosts Angola.
“I think in our group it will be Cameroon and Morocco battling it out for top spot,” said Giresse, whose team hail from the country with the smallest population left in the competition. “We will be happy if we can make it into the top three.”
Group B also threw up some tough fixtures with Nigeria, Tunisia and Kenya all going head-to-head along with Mozambique.
Reigning African champions Egypt were given a slightly easier-looking assignment in Group C where their main rivals are likely to be two-time World Cup participants Algeria.
Ghana were joined by Mali, Benin and Sudan in Group D while southern Africans Malawi, the lowest-ranked team in the draw, are in Group E along with Didier Drogba’s Ivory Coast, Guinea and Burkina Faso.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS