Eritrea has decided not to participate in the World Cup qualification process. On the way to Qatar 2022, ten players requested asylum in Botswana.
In 2026, a new World Cup will take place. This time with headquarters in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Even though these countries know that they qualified for the event because they are the hosts, In the last hours it has been possible to meet a country that has been excluded from this tournament .
This is Eritrea, a country which has decided not to be part of the African qualification process for the Cup. . As the football federation and FIFA reported in a statement, the current team, which is not included in the FIFA rankings because it has not played an official match for more than four years, will not play not his matches.
There, they emphasize that “FIFA and CAF can confirm that the Eritrean National Football Federation has withdrawn from the preliminary competition for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. . All Eritrea matches have been canceled, while the rest of the Group E match schedule remains unchanged, featuring Morocco, Zambia, Congo, Tanzania and Niger.
Of course, African media claim that this decision to withdraw the team was made by the country’s government, because they feared the abandonment of several players from the squad during the first group match against Morocco scheduled for November 16 in the city of Agadir .
A situation that has already been observed during the qualification process for the Qatar Cup 2022.In 2019, against Botswana, ten players on the squad requested asylum. which ended up becoming an embarrassing event for the government of dictator Isaias Afwerki, who has ruled the country since 1991.
The withdrawal of the Eritrean team from its qualifying group began to become clear in mid-October, when the Moroccan federation already suggested that its first rival would not appear for the match.
Of course, only six days before the start of the process, FIFA finally released a statement that it did not want to make, because the highest international football organization wants all 211 federations under its umbrella to participate in these proceedings. , to emphasize the global nature of the sport, which last happened on the way to Russia 2018, but with the subsequent departures of Indonesia and Zimbabwe.
It is now awaited what decision the Eritrean authorities will take regarding the qualification process for the 2025 Africa Cup, since so far the football team has not scheduled any official matches that would help them prepare for this event.
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Source: Latercera
I’m Scott Moore, a professional writer and journalist based in the US. I’ve been writing for various publications for over 8 years now, and have been working as an author at athletistic for the past five years. My work has been featured by some of the leading sports websites and magazines across Europe.
