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Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
THE wait is over for the Warriors as they will know their Afcon finals group stage opponents tonight after the draw at the Yaoundé Conference Centre in Cameroon.

This is the fifth time the Warriors go into the hat for the Afcon finals.

Previous group draws haven’t been easy for the Warriors as they have been drawn against
big guns of the game on the continent.

For the first time, Zimbabwe qualified for the Afcon finals with a game to spare and under fire coach Zdravko Logarusic even made history for himself by becoming the first foreign coach to lead the Warriors to the finals.

They’ll be hoping the good fortunes that came their way in qualifiers will follow them into tonight’s draw to break the jinx of failing to go beyond the group stage.

The Warriors are in Pot 3 together Cape Verde, Gabon, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau for tonight’s draw.

This means the Warriors are guaranteed of not being in the same group with any of these teams.

The big guns Zimbabwe could face are in Pot 1 and 2.

Pot 1 has hosts Cameroon, Algeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, while Egypt headline Pot 2 with Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea.

Pot 4 has Malawi, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Comoros, Ethiopia and Gambia in its ranks.

The opening match and final will be played at the newly built Olembe Stadium in Yaoundé, which has a capacity of 60 000.

Other matches will be played in the cities of Douala, Bafoussam, Garoua and Limbe.

The Afcon finals were initially meant to be staged in June/July 2020 but, Caf postponed them to January 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The continental football governing body then further postponed the tournament to January 2022.

There have been 35 editions of the Afcon finals and Egypt is the most successful country in the tournament with seven titles followed by Cameroon with five. — @innocentskizoe