CAF Denies Golden Eaglets Of Nigeria Under-17 AFCON Slot

The hopes of the Golden Eaglets qualifying for the 2025 Under-17 AFCON in Morocco have officially come to an end.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has finalized the slots for this year’s expanded tournament, unfortunately overlooking the Golden Eaglets.

Note that the 2025 under-17 AFCON which is scheduled to take place between March 30 and April 19, 2025, serves as a qualifier for the 2025 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Qatar, a tournament that Nigeria has impressively won five times.

Despite finishing third at the previous WAFU B under-17 Championship in Ghana, the Golden Eaglets were unable to secure a qualifying position, with Ivory Coast and the winner, Burkina Faso, claiming the automatic spots.

CAF has allocated four slots in the expanded tournament to countries including the Gambia, which achieved a commendable third place at the WAFU Zone A qualifiers, alongside Tunisia and two others from the CECAFA and COSAFA regions.

Furthermore, two additional slots for the 16-team tournament will be determined by the top two teams from the UNIFFAC region qualifiers, which are set to take place in Cameroon from February 16 to 28. The five competing teams include Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Congo.

At this juncture, the Golden Eaglets find themselves without a place in the expanded tournament, marking a notable miss as they will not participate in back-to-back FIFA under-17 World Cups. This absence follows their exclusion from the 2023 under-17 FIFA World Cup in Indonesia due to not finishing in the top four at the under-17 AFCON in Algeria.

Last week, CAF announced the expansion of the tournament, a decision that signals a new era for African youth football. This anticipation for expansion was fueled by FIFA’s recent move at its Bangkok Congress to increase Africa’s under-17 World Cup slots to ten teams for the upcoming tournament in Qatar which will feature 48 teams.