2018 FIFA World Cup seeding (CAF): Official format and simulations

CAF have announced some details regarding the qualification format for the 2018 World Cup.

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.

The preliminaries of the FIFA World Cup shall begin during the two FIFA dates in October 2015, given that the draws shall take place on 25 July 2015 at Saint-Petersburg in Russia.



As usual with competition/pot sims, I used ClubElo's expected goals formula. Games up to and including 29 January 2015 + Iraq vs. UAE 2 - 3

Very important: this is based on the fixtures list from FIFA.com. If teams schedule other friendlies things will look different.  

As there are no details regarding the preliminary rounds, here are the average points for the African teams in July 2015.

1	Algeria	1023.8
2	Ghana	988.64
3	Tunisia	914.16
4	Côte d'Ivoire	851.97
5	Senegal	813
6	Cameroon	769
7	Guinea	721.55
8	Congo	688.68
9	Mali	657
10	Nigeria	630
11	Equatorial Guinea	621.92
12	South Africa	615
13	Congo DR	610.7
14	Cape Verde Islands	602
15	Gabon	597
16	Egypt	559
17	Zambia	543
18	Burkina Faso	515
19	Uganda	480
20	Togo	459
21	Mozambique	433
22	Angola	403
23	Morocco	375.27
24	Malawi	372
25	Rwanda	347
26	Sierra Leone	328
27	Ethiopia	304
28	Niger	290
29	Sudan	290
30	Botswana	282
31	Benin	282
32	Lesotho	255
33	Tanzania	250
34	Libya	233
35	Kenya	208
36	Zimbabwe	180
37	Burundi	179
38	Namibia	144
39	Guinea-Bissau	131
40	Liberia	126
41	Central African Republic	111
42	Mauritania	108
43	Chad	100
44	Madagascar	83
45	Swaziland	80
46	Gambia	67
47	Seychelles	60
48	Sao Tome e Principe	48
49	Comoros	37
50	Mauritius	34
51	South Sudan	24
52	Eritrea	8
53	Somalia	6
54	Djibouti	4

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About me:

Christian, husband, father x 3, programmer, Romanian. Started the blog in March 2007. Quit in April 2018. You can find me on LinkedIn.