Placed among the top-seed teams in the draw, DR Congo who missed 221 edition in Cameroon, will face teams that played the TotalEnergies AFCON finals and will do everything not to miss the Côte d’Ivoire train.
Gabon, Mauritania and Sudan will start their qualifiers with a lot of ambitions and beware of the teams who will try to minimize them.
Mauritania, after playing the last two editions in 2019 and 2021, want to give themselves every chance of being in the next one by bringing in former Comoros coach Amir Abdou.
Sudan and Gabon, which played the second round in 2021, were present in Cameroon and unsurprisingly, they will do everything to be present in Côte d’Ivoire.
Amir Abdou, Mauritania coach:
“It’s a homogeneous group, DR Congo will be the big team, vengeful after missing the AFCON. Gabon will come with their big individuals, Sudan, we must not bury them. It is up to us (Mauritania) to seek qualification. It will be difficult for the players to be ready and to be conquerors. I want to taste this AFCON again, the end of the season is difficult, but the objective is to be one of the two who will go to the AFCON. From the start, you have to be in the race and not chase after the points, the match against Sudan is going to be important, you have to focus on that and then go to Gabon. You have to be positive, you have to believe in it.”
