Inaki Williams gives Ghana winning start to World Cup qualifying; Zambia and Libya also win<\/a><\/p>\nKonate and Hamed Traore scored two goals each and Haller, Ibrahim Sangare, Simon Adingra, Seko Fofana and Jean-Philippe Krasso one apiece in the matchday one Group F mismatch.<\/p>\n
Seychelles, a tourist destination off the east coast of Africa, are 195th in the FIFA rankings, 121 places below the Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n
The seedings for the first round of 2026 World Cup qualifying in Africa meant the nine top-ranked teams were paired at home against the nine bottom ones, so it was almost inevitable that there could be some one-sided matches.<\/p>\n
Before the Abidjan goal deluge, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya and Algeria shared the record with eight-goal winning margins.<\/p>\n
Cameroon, whose eight World Cup appearances is an African record, struggled for much of a Group D home match with minnows Mauritius before a couple of late goals completed a 3-0 win.<\/p>\n
Brentford forward Bryan Mbeumo broke the deadlock in first-half added time in Douala and Georges N\u2019Koudou and Frank Magri netted when the visitors tired.<\/p>\n
Tunisia, which has qualified six times for the global showpiece, also won comfortably at home, beating Sao Tome e Principe 4-0 in Group H in Rades.<\/p>\n
Burkina Faso, who hope to challenge Egypt for the first place and automatic qualification for the 2026 finals from Group A, suffered a setback when held 1-1 by Guinea-Bissau.<\/p>\n
Reigning African champions Senegal and South Africa are among the teams in action on Saturday, when the 26-fixture first round ends. Matchday two begins on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\nComments\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before the Abidjan goal deluge, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya and Algeria shared the record with eight-goal winning margins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-sport-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}