Ghana's national team will face a punishing four-week fixture schedule when the qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup start in June next year.

Fifa has confirmed that the Black Stars will play their first four matches in Group Five on successive weekends in June.

Apart from presenting the Ghana Football Association with a logistical headache as the team has to criss-cross the continent, the players face the risk of a burn-out because of this punishing schedule.

Most of the Black Stars players ply their trade in Europe and the long season in those countries would have just ended which means they have not time to rest and recover.

The Blacks Stars host Libya in Accra on 1 June before travelling to southern Africa seven days later to take on Lesotho.

Ghana will continue on the road to Libreville to play Gabon on 15 June before hosting the Gabonese a week later in Accra.

The four weekends of June will be used for the first four rounds of group matches.

The first group phase of the qualifiers begin at the end of May and conclude in September.

Poor flight connections, which often turn travelling to international matches into multi-day and multi-stop expeditions, are likely to cause consternation among coaches.

African sides often find it easier have to travel via Europe South Africa are the first host nation to participate in the World Cup preliminaries since Italy in 1934.

Although they automatically qualify for the 2010 World Cup, the preliminaries are also being used to determine the 16 teams for the African Nations Cup finals in Angola in 2010.

The 48 African countries left in the race for place at the World Cup are divided into 12 groups.

The winners and eight best placed runners-up go through to the second league phase after October.

The final 20 teams will be divided into five groups from which the winners qualify for the World Cup.

The top three in each group join hosts Angola in the 2010 African Cup.