Eritrea withdrew its men’s team from Africa qualifying for the 2026 World Cup on November 10 without giving any explanation. The British daily The Guardian revealed on Monday that the government would have put pressure to prevent players from fleeing during the trips.
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The first participation in the Football World Cup in the history of Eritrea? It’s not for now. The country in the Horn of Africa has decided to withdraw its men’s team from qualifying for the 2026 edition. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Eritrea fears seeing its players defect during matches abroad .
“Fifa and CAF confirm that the Eritrean Football Federation has withdrawn from the qualifiers for the 2026 Fifa World Cup™,” announced the international federation and the continental body in a joint statement, without give further explanations. “Following the withdrawal of Eritrea, Group E of the CAF qualifiers will be contested by the five remaining teams, namely Morocco, Zambia, Congo, Tanzania and Niger. The rest of the group E match schedule remains unchanged.”
The Guardian managed to contact sources close to the team who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. They express their dismay at a decision that they attribute to the government.
“They are killing Eritrean football”
“It’s heartbreaking,” says one of the sources. “They are killing Eritrean football. It is not easy for the players to ask for an explanation. They can send you to prison for protesting. You can only wait and see what they decide.”
The root if this problem is the dictator. Impossible to separate football and politics in Eritrea. Journalists have been asking me since years what’s the problem? Do you know how ashamed I feel all the time to explain the problems. Only nation with problems like this.#redseacamels
— Eritrean Football 🔴🌊🐪🇪🇷 (@eritreafootball) November 12, 2023
The regime of President Isaias Afwerki, in office since 1993, is considered one of the most repressive on the continent. This African country has already frequently been excluded from international competitions due to the defections of its players during away matches. Moreover, the men’s and women’s teams of this country no longer even appear in the Fifa rankings because they have not played at least one match in the last 48 months.
A fear which is based on the turbulent history of the selection. In 2019, during the last official match of the Eritrean selection, seven players defected during the trip to Uganda. Ten years earlier, twelve players fled after the CECAFA Cup (the Central and East African Cup) in Kenya.
Eritrea is not the only country experiencing this phenomenon of loss of sporting talent. In Chile, during the Pan American Games, seven Cuban athletes fled to seek asylum.
