Published: May 20, 2026
MONRAVIA — Liberia has been drawn alongside Mali, Cape Verde and Rwanda in Group K of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers following Tuesday’s draw in Cairo, Egypt, presenting newly appointed Lone Star coach Mohammed Adil Erradi with an immediate measure of the scale of his rebuilding task.
The draw comes just one day after Liberia confirmed Erradi, a Belgian-Moroccan tactician, as head coach on a three-year contract. His primary mandate is to guide the Lone Star back to the AFCON finals after a 24-year absence from Africa’s premier football competition.
The group offers no favorable passage. Mali are established continental regulars with consistently strong qualifying records, while Cape Verde have grown into one of West Africa’s most organized sides and currently remain in contention for a place at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Rwanda, the fourth member of the group, is a country Erradi knows intimately from his time coaching APR FC, where he won three league titles and oversaw a 50-match unbeaten run, a familiarity that could prove both tactically useful and psychologically complicated when the two sides meet.
The qualifying campaign will be played across three FIFA international windows between September 2026 and March 2027, with six matchdays in total determining which teams advance to the tournament.
The 2027 AFCON will be held from June 19 to July 17 across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in a historic jointly hosted edition of the competition. CAF confirmed that the three host nations could not be placed in the same qualifying group. Although the hosts qualify automatically for the finals, they will still participate in the qualifiers, with group standings determining how many additional teams advance from those groups.
Under the standard qualification format, the top two teams in most groups will advance to the tournament. However, in groups containing a host nation, only one additional team will qualify if the host does not finish first, a format distinction that will shape tactical approaches in several groups across the continent.
For Liberia, the road back to AFCON runs directly through one of the more competitive groups in the draw. Whether Erradi can translate his club-level success into national team results, and do so quickly enough to make September’s opening qualifiers count, will define the early months of his tenure.
Full AFCON 2027 Qualifying Draw
Group A: Morocco, Gabon, Niger, Lesotho — Group B: Egypt, Angola, Malawi, South Sudan — Group C: Ivory Coast, Ghana, The Gambia, Somalia — Group D: South Africa, Guinea, Kenya, Eritrea — Group E: DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe — Group F: Burkina Faso, Benin, Mauritania, Central African Republic — Group G: Cameroon, Comoros, Namibia, Congo — Group H: Tunisia, Uganda, Libya, Botswana — Group I: Algeria, Zambia, Togo, Burundi — Group J: Senegal, Mozambique, Sudan, Ethiopia — Group K: Mali, Cape Verde, Rwanda, Liberia — Group L: Nigeria, Madagascar, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau
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