Young Gladiators Head Coch, Errol Damaseb has selected most of his squad from the U17 National Team that played the Region Five Games and U17 COSAFA Girls Championship and is hopeful that they girls will do well in their upcoming World Cup qualifier fixture against Uganda on 19 and 22 September 2025 at the FUFA Stadium, Kadiba.
โWe are very excited to be back on the picth,we decided to keep the same crop of players we had in the regional tournaments earlier this year they have been playing together for the past year and they are experenced and exposed to the type of competitions.
The team has been in camp for over a week now but the Windhoek based players started training a month ago, we studied the Ugandan team and we picked up that they are playing route one,attacking from the wings and we worked around that in the training sessions. We are hoping to qaulify for the next roundโ said Damaseb
The tournament, scheduled for August 2026, will feature 24 nations, including four representatives from Africa. A total of 38 African teams are vying for the four coveted slots, with the qualifiers set to unfold over four knockout rounds of home-and-away fixtures.
Qualifiers Format
- First Round:ย The 12 lowest-ranked teams, based on previous U-20 Womenโs World Cup qualifiers performance, will contest in this round. The six winners will advance to join the 26 top-ranked teams exempted from the first round.
- Second Round:ย The six first-round winners and 26 exempted teams will form 32 teams. These will battle it out for 16 spots in the third round.
- Third Round:ย The remaining 16 teams will compete in a knockout format to determine the eight teams advancing to the fourth round.
- Fourth Round:ย The final eight teams will play knockout ties, with the winners earning qualification to the 2026 FIFA U-20 Womenโs World Cup.