2025 U-17 AFCON | How CAF Ignores Golden Eaglets, Gifts Amajimbos The Ticket

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has allocated a slot to South Africa’s U-17 team, known as the Amajimbos, instead of Nigeria’s Golden Eaglets, to participate in the expanded 2025 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Morocco.

Golden Eaglets finished third at last year’s WAFU B U17 Championship despite defeating Ghana 3-2 but failed to qualify for this year’s U17 AFCON.

Only the top two teams from the regional qualifiers earned automatic spots, leaving Nigeria without a berth.

The U-17 AFCON will be held in Morocco between March 30 and April 19, 2025. It will serve as a qualifier for the 2025 FIFA U17 World Cup in Qatar, which Nigeria has won five times.

However, Nigeria was left out of the automatic qualifying positions for the region, as Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso claimed them.

CAF allocated the additional slots in the expanded tournament to teams from other regions: Gambia, which finished third in the WAFU Zone A qualifiers; Tunisia, as the UNAF region’s host nation; and two countries from the CECAFA and COSAFA regions.

Recent speculation had suggested that Nigeria might still qualify if CAF expanded the U17 AFCON to 16 teams following FIFA’s decision to increase African representation at the U17 World Cup. However, while the tournament was indeed expanded, that speculation proved unfounded.

The remaining two spots in the 16-team tournament will be filled by the top two teams from the UNIFFAC region qualifiers, to be hosted by Cameroon from February 16 to 28.

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

As a result, the Golden Eaglets have missed out on the U17 AFCON qualification and, consequently, will not participate in the 2025 FIFA U17 World Cup, marking their second consecutive absence from the global tournament.