Black Satellites to join 2019 AFCON qualifiers in second round

The national under-20 men team, the Black Satellites, would join qualifiers for the Total U-20 Africa Cup of Nations in Niger in 2019, in the second round of the competition.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) fixtures released on Monday means that the Black Starlets would play the winner of Algeria and Tunisia in the preliminaries.

The development is influenced by CAF’s exempted teams’ policy, which states that; “the teams exempted are the 12 teams who qualified to the final tournaments of the last two editions in addition to the four teams, who reached the last round of the qualifiers of the last edition.”

The Satellites are joined by Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, South Africa and Zambia as the exempted teams for the 2019 edition of the Total U-20 AFCON.

The Ghana U-20 men teams’ first leg fixture is scheduled to come off within the 11, 12, and 13 of May 2018 and 18, 19, and 20 of the same month for their second leg encounters.

The Satellites would be the travelling team for the first tie before playing at home for the second game with either Algeria or Tunisia.

Newly appointed head coach of the Satellite team, Jimmy Cobblah, assisted by Nuru Ahmed, would have his first real test as coach of the U-20 side when he plays against one of the North African teams and probably earn qualification to the tournament itself.