Ghana, host Gabon, holders Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Algeria have emerged top seeds for the draw of the final tournament of the Total Africa Cup of Nations Gabon 2017.
The quartet will make up Pot 1 for the draw to be held on Wednesday, 19 October 2016 in Libreville at 19H00 local time (16H00 GMT).
The seedings approved by the Organising Committee of the Africa Cup of Nations at its meeting on Monday, 26 September 2016 at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, was determined taking into account the performance of the qualified teams during the following competitions:
* AFCON final tournaments (2012, 2013, 2015) *AFCON qualifiers (2013, 2015, 2017) *FIFA World Cup (2014) *FIFA World Cup qualifiers (2014)
The formula adopted for each of the AFCON final tournament was eight (8) points for the winner, six (6) for runner-up, four (4) for semi-finalists, three (3) for quarter-finalists, two (2) for third in the group and one (1) for fourth in the group.
It was also decided to give more importance to the recent editions of the AFCON; 2015 multiplied by a co-efficient of 3, 2013 by 2 and 1 for 2012.
For the AFCON qualifiers, 2017 edition was multiplied by a co-efficient of 2, 1 for 2015 and 0.5 for the 2013 edition with four (4) points for 1st in the group, three (3) for 2nd in the group, two (2) for 3rd in the group and one (1) for 4th in the group, whereas the 2013 qualifiers had three (3) points for the qualified team, two (2) for loser in the second round and one (1) for loser in the first round.
For the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the point system decided are as follows; 20 for winner, 12 for runner-up, 10 for semi-finalists, 8 for quarter-finalists, 6 for round of 16, 4 for 3rd in the group and 3 for 4th in the group multiplied by a co-efficient of 2.
And for the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, seven (7) points was awarded for qualifying to the World Cup, five (5) for reaching the Playoffs, three (3) for 2nd in the group, two (2) for 3rd in the group and one (1) for 4th in the group multiplied by a co-efficient of 1.
Based on the above, the following four pots were established;
Pot 1: Gabon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Algeria Pot 2: Tunisia, Mali, Burkina Faso, DR Congo Pot 3: Cameroon, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt Pot 4: Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Guinea Bissau
For the draw, host Gabon automatically goes to A1 and holders Cote d’Ivoire in C1. A draw will done for Ghana and Algeria for the positions of either B1 or D1.
The second stage will be drawing of teams in Pot 4. The first team drawn goes to A4, B4 for the second, C4 for the third and D4 for the fourth team.
The same procedure will be repeated for Pot 3 and Pot 2 until the groups are completed.
The final tournament will be held from 14 January to 5 February 2017 in the Gabonese cities of Libreville, Franceville, Oyem-Bitam and Port-Gentil.