Basetsana v Botswana as Africa Qualifiers Announced

The world football governing body (FIFA) has released dates for the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup 2014 continental qualifiers to take between September 2013 and January 2014.

A total of 17 African countries will participate in three round-robin stages in a process that will determine two African countries that will represent the continent at the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup to be staged in Canada from 5-24 August 2014.

The South African U20 Women’s National team (Basetsana) will kick-off their qualification campaign against neighbours Botswana. The matches will be played between October and November to determine who progresses to the next stage.

The winner between the two will progress to the second round where they will play the winner between Tanzania’s Taifa Stars and Mozambique.

The third and penultimate round will take place in January 2014 where four teams will battle it out to determine the two teams that will gain automatic qualification for the 7th Edition of the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup.

SAFA’s Acting Technical Director, Fran Hilton-Smith said while the road to Canada won’t be easy, South Africa has enough depth to go all the way and secure qualification for the World Cup.

“The U20 team will shortly be preparing to play Botswana in the first round of the qualifiers. The bulk of the squad are players coming through from the High Performance Centre in Pretoria,” said Hilton Smith.

The HPC is where the majority of those who participated in the FIFA Women’s World Cup that took place in 2010 came from. Some of these players include Kelso Peskin, Nomvula Kgoale, Alice Khosa Megan Newman and even Robyn Moodaly, who now plays overseas.

Two African representatives will join 14 other nations, including the hosts in the world spectacular.

(With editing by gsport)