Speculations about the Golden Eaglets making the cut for the 2025 U-17 AFCON in Morocco have ultimately been dashed after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced plans to finalise the slots for this year’s expanded tournament, overlooking Nigeria, as reported by The PUNCH.
The U-17 AFCON will take place in Morocco from March 30 to April 19, 2025, and will serve as a qualifier for the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar in November—a tournament that 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 securing the automatic spots in the region.
CAF has now allocated four slots in the expanded tournament to Gambia, who finished third at the WAFU Zone A qualifiers, as well as to Tunisia and two countries from the CECAFA and COSAFA regions.
The remaining two spots for the 16-team tournament will be filled by the top two teams 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 UNIFFAC tournament.
As it stands, 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.
(The PUNCH)
