Burkina Faso will be out - expecting to begin their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign with a victory when they play as host to Guinea-Bissau on Friday evening at the Grand Stadium of Marrakech, Morocco.
Both nations have never qualified for the World Cup, but the expansion of the World Cup tournament will likely open the door for several ‘hungry’ debutants.
However, with nine group winners advancing automatically to the upcoming World’s most prestigious tournament in North America, Burkina Faso will already have their sights set on finishing above Egypt in Group A. The four best runners-up will fight for a playoff spot, too, making every point collected vitally important between now and the end of the qualifying round campaign.
Burkina Faso have been a strong force and a nightmare to teams at the AFCON in recent years, finishing as runners-up in 2013 before reaching the semi-finals in 2017 and 2021. As such, they will be hoping to make another strong impact in Côte d’Ivoire in the New Year, but for now their topmost priority and focus will be to qualify for their first ever World Cup.
Recent form has been a little patchy for the Stallions, with Hubert Velud ending a winless run of five matches by beating Mauritania in a friendly last month. But with the likes of Dango Ouattara, Bertrand Traore and Edmond Tapsoba competing in Europe's big five leagues, Burkina Faso possess enough quality and spirit to cause any team major frustrations.
The Stallions are ranked 54 places higher than their Friday (tonight’s) opponents, Velud will certainly be demanding his team to deliver a victory in their opening match in Morocco on Friday, before doing the same away to Ethiopia next week.
Despite Guinea-Bissau’s developmental nature, which they recently qualified for their fourth successive AFCON tourney, although they are yet to win a match at Africa's most glamorous competition. In each of their three appearances, they have drawn one match and lost two to crash out at the group stage, so they will be hoping to improve on that numbers in the New Year.
As the third seeds in Group A, Guinea-Bissau's chances of claiming a top-two spot are clearly slim, but they will travel to Marrakech with plenty of hope and confidence of causing an upset to the Stallions having won three of their last five matches.
KICKOFF: 19:00 GMT (7:00pm)
By: Pascal Amoah
