Chelsea's Ghana ace Michael Essien hopes African teams can dominate next year's World Cup.

Ghana have already qualified for South Africa 2010 and Essien is excited about playing the tournament on his home continent.

He told BBC Sport: "It's the first time the World Cup is coming to Africa so hopefully the African teams could be very, very strong and we can give the rest of the world big troubles.

"So we should look forward to it and hopefully one of the African countries can go a bit further."