2006 FIFA World Cup qualification (CAF)

Listed below are the dates and results for the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds for Africa. 51 teams took part (only Comoros and Djibouti did not enter), competing for 5 World Cup places.

Format

The qualification composed of two rounds.

• First round: Nine teams entered the competition directly in the second round: the five teams that qualified for the 2002 World Cup Finals (Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia) and the four highest-ranking teams in the 25 June 2003 FIFA world rankings (Congo DR, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, and Morocco). The other 42 teams were paired to play knock-out matches home and away. The 21 winners would advance to the second round.

• Second round: In the second round, the 30 teams were divided into five groups of six teams each. Teams in each group would play home and away against each other. The team with most points in each group would qualify to the World Cup.

The competition also constituted the qualification competition for the 2006 African Nations Cup with the top three nations of each group qualifying (except for Egypt, which qualifies as the host nation, the fourth nation in Egypt's group qualifying in Egypt's place, which is Libya).

The African qualifying zone saw four out of five finals places going to World Cup debutants (Angola, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana). Nigeria missed out on a fourth consecutive finals appearance while Cameroon did not reach their fifth consecutive finals.

The African zone also featured a group of death — Group 3, which brought together Africa's most frequent World Cup qualifier Cameroon with the two eventual finalists of the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations: Egypt and the Ivory Coast.

First round

Second round

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Qualified teams

The following five teams from CAF qualified for the final tournament.

<div id="1">¹ Bold indicates champions for that year. Italic indicates hosts for that year.</div>

Top goalscorers

Below are full goalscorer lists for the each round:

References