Nigeria’s hopes of featuring at the 2025 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Morocco have been dashed after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) finalized its qualification slots, omitting the Golden Eaglets.
The tournament, scheduled for March 30 to April 19, 2025, will serve as a qualifier for the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar later that year, a competition Nigeria has won five times.
Despite finishing third at the 2023 WAFU B U-17 Championship in Ghana, the Golden Eaglets failed to secure qualification, with Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast claiming the two automatic spots from the region.
CAF has now allotted four additional slots to The Gambia (third place in WAFU Zone A), Tunisia, and two teams from the CECAFA and COSAFA regions. The final two places for the expanded 16-team tournament will be determined by the top two teams from the UNIFFAC regional qualifiers, set to be held in Cameroon from February 16 to 28. Competing for those spots are Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Congo.
With no place in the expanded tournament, the Golden Eaglets will miss back-to-back FIFA U-17 World Cups, having also failed to qualify for the 2023 edition in Indonesia after finishing outside the top four at the U-17 AFCON in Algeria.
Last week, CAF confirmed the expansion of the U-17 AFCON following FIFA’s decision to increase Africa’s U-17 World Cup slots to 10 teams for the 2025 tournament in Qatar. However, despite the global competition’s expansion to 48 teams, CAF’s qualification adjustments did not include Nigeria, dealing a significant blow to the country’s age-grade football.