CAF excludes Golden Eaglets from final U-17 AFCON lineup

Speculations about the Golden Eaglets making the cut for the 2025 U-17 AFCON in Morocco have eventually been crushed after the Confederation of African Football announced plans to complete the slots for this year’s expanded tournament and overlooked Nigeria.

The U-17 AFCON will take place in Morocco between March 30 and April 19, 2025, and will be a qualifier for the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar in November – a tournament Nigeria has won five times.

Despite finishing third at last year’s WAFU B U-17 Championship in Ghana, the Golden Eaglets fell short in the qualifiers with Ivory Coast and winners Burkina Faso picking the automatic spots in the region.

CAF has now allotted four slots in the expanded tournament to the Gambia, who finished third at the WAFU Zone A qualifiers; Tunisia and two countries from the CECAFA and COSAFA regions.

The two other spots for the 16-team tournament will be filled by the top two sides in the UNIFFAC region qualifiers which will be hosted by Cameroon from February 16 to 28, as confirmed by CAF on Thursday.

Five teams; Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Congo will compete in the UNIFAF tournament.

As things stand, the Golden Eaglets have been left without a place in the expanded tournament and will now miss back-to-back FIFA U-17 World Cups.

Nigeria have won the U-17 World Cup five times and this miss marks a setback for Nigeria’s age-grade football.

They also missed out on the 2023 U-17 FIFA World Cup in Indonesia by finishing outside the top four at the U-17 AFCON in Algeria.

In a statement released last week, CAF said its executive committee had approved the expansion of the tournament.

The anticipation for an expanded tournament stemmed from FIFA’s recent decision at its Bangkok Congress to increase Africa’s U17 World Cup slots to 10 teams for the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar.

With the global competition expanding to 48 teams, many believed CAF would adjust its qualification process to allow more African teams to compete.