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Once World Cup outsiders, soccer-scarce nations are crashing the party
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- Once World Cup outsiders, soccer-scarce nations are crashing the party
Once World Cup outsiders, soccer-scarce nations are crashing the party originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
One hundred minutes into a scoreless match Tuesday, Jamaican defenders watched the flight of a corner kick as it curled toward their goal. And for a brief, costly, moment everyone forgot about Axel Tuanzebe.
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Tuanzebe, of the Democratic Republic of Congo, had called this match the biggest of his career. Only the winner of the FIFA World Cup qualifier in Guadalajara, Mexico, would advance to play this summer in the 48-team field comprising the most popular sporting tournament on the planet.
Charging forward, Tuanzebe met the ball as its arc fell just in front of the goal, smashing it for a 1-0 lead.
His goal didn't end the game immediately. Congo had to endure 20 more minutes of extra time before it won, 1-0. But that wait paled to the country's 52-year absence from the world's biggest sporting event — a drought that ended Tuesday, when it became the 47th out of 48 teams to qualify for theWorld Cup.
"Right now, I don't think we fully realize it yet, but when we get back to Kinshasa, it's going to be crazy," Congo striker Cédric Bakambu said, according to Reuters .
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Celebrations weren't limited to Kinshasa on a day when the final six countries qualified to round out the World Cup field. The expansion from 32 to 48 countries for this World Cup created opportunities for nations that had spent years on the outside looking in, such as Iraq (which last appeared in 1986), Turkey (2002) and Czechia (2006).
Kerem Akturkoglu (7) of Turkiye celebrates after scoring a goal during the 2026 FIFA World Cup Europe Qualifiers play-off final match between Kosovo and Turkiye at the Fadil Vokrri Stadium in Pristina, Kosovo, on March 31, 2026.
But the longest wait of all had taken place in Congo. The country was still named Zaire in 1974, when the nation was outscored, 14-0, in three group stage games. It was the nation's first World Cup appearance and its last for the next five decades.
The 1974 team had won the Africa Cup of Nations and was encouraged by a figure no less powerful than the president, Mobutu Sese Seko, who had "used football as much as possible for hegemonic regime control," researchers wrote in 2022 .
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After a particularly poor performance in 1966, not long after Mobutu began his three-decade run atop the government, the president brought national players playing abroad back to Zaire and outlawed their transfers to other nation's leagues to build up Zaire's domestic competition.
By 1968, Zaire had won the Africa Cup of Nations. When it repeated in 1974, it became the first nation from sub-Saharan Africa to qualify for the World Cup, and each player was provided housing and a Volkswagen Passat as a show of appreciation, Mohamed Kalambay, a goalkeeper on the team, recalled to the BBC .
But such lavish funding didn't last. The national team, called the Leopards, struggled as the country's domestic league operated without support from sponsors or government funding.
Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, soccer leaders within Congo enlisted a strategy widely used in international soccer — calling in the help of dual-national players with lineage to the country but who developed as players outside its borders. The job of persuading players with Congolese ties to represent the country's national team on its long-shot run to the World Cup fell to Gabriel Zakuani, a Congolese player whose career had been spent mostly in England.
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Convincing Aaron Wan-Bissaka, a defender for English Premier League club West Ham, and Tuanzebe were priorities, he told the BBC last year ; both had come up within the English national team system. Getting parents on board was helpful, Zakuani said. So was being able to make his case no matter where a player grew up.
"I speak eight (languages), so that helps," Zakuani said.
The country remains marred by fighting in its east. In December, on the same day that U.S. President Donald Trump attended the draw for the World Cup, he hosted leaders from Rwanda and Congo as they affirmed their commitments to a peace deal. But fighting has continued. By then, though, the country was entering the final stages of its qualification.
"It's my country; it's where my parents are from," Wan-Bissaka told the BBC . "I grew up in a Congolese household. I was just proud to represent them. As soon as I joined, they welcomed me, accepted me."
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Tuanzebe was born in Congo, but was in Manchester United's academy by grade school. He made his Premier League debut at 17. He now plays for Burnley.
A decade later, this summer, he'll make his World Cup debut thanks to his 100th-minute goal Tuesday.
"To get the winning goal for the country, I mean, this is what as a young boy you dream about," Tuanzebe said after the match . "It's happened for me and I'm so very happy."
