Speculations about the Golden Eaglets making the cut for the 2025 U-17 AFCON in Morocco have eventually been crushed.
This is after the Confederation of African Football announced plans to complete the slots for this year’s expanded tournament and overlooked Nigeria.
CAF confirmed this on Thursday.
CAF has now allotted four slots in the expanded tournament to 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.
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.
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.
