After nearly two decades on the sidelines of continental competition, Eritrea’s national men’s football team has pulled off one of the most surprising results in recent African football, advancing to the group stage of 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifying following a 4-1 aggregate preliminary round win over Eswatini.
The milestone marks Eritrea’s first appearance in Afcon qualifying in 18 years, and comes after a years-long pattern of withdrawals and absences that left the side almost entirely absent from top international competition. Their last outing in an Afcon qualifier dates all the way back to September 2007, in a fixture that, in a striking turn of irony, was also against Eswatini.
Ali Sulieman, a striker plying his trade with Egyptian Premier League side Kahrabaa Ismailia, emerged as the hero of the two-legged tie, netting a hat-trick across both matches to power the Red Sea Camels to victory. Eritrea, which lacks any international-standard football stadium to host home matches, played its first leg in neutral Morocco last Wednesday, securing a 2-0 win thanks to strikes from Sulieman and attacking teammate Siem Eyob-Abraha, a former Manchester United youth prospect who currently plays for Sheffield United in England’s EFL Championship. The side extended their aggregate lead in the return leg in Eswatini, holding on for a 2-1 victory despite the hosts scoring a late stoppage-time consolation goal in the 96th minute.
Ranked 184th in the current FIFA global rankings — with only four African nations sitting lower than Eritrea — the side has played barely a handful of senior international matches over the past six years. Its last competitive fixture before this qualifying tie was a 2022 World Cup qualifier against Namibia in September 2019, and after a friendly match against Sudan in January 2020, the senior men’s side did not compete in another fixture until a pair of friendlies against Niger in May 2024. Most recently, Eritrea was scheduled to face bitter regional rival Ethiopia in 2024 African Nations Championship qualifying, but pulled out of the fixture at the eleventh hour.
Industry analysts widely attribute Eritrea’s long history of withdrawals from international competition to longstanding concerns over domestic-based players defecting while traveling abroad. This fear was realized in 2019, when multiple members of an Eritrean youth side absconded during a regional tournament hosted in Uganda. Beyond player concerns, Eritrea, a one-party state that gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, has faced decades of tense regional relations and domestic political unrest, including a bloody two-year border war with Ethiopia between 1998 and 2000 that has left cross-border relations fractured ever since.
Under new management led by former Egypt international defender Hesham Yakan, who represented the Pharaohs at the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, Eritrea has made a deliberate return to continental football this cycle, building a mixed squad that blends both homegrown talent and players from the large Eritrean diaspora. The side is one of six nations that have secured their place in the group stage of qualifying, joining Burundi, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Somalia and South Sudan from the preliminary round.
The 2027 Afcon tournament, set to be hosted jointly by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, makes history as the first edition of the continental showpiece to be co-hosted by three countries. Group stage play is scheduled to kick off in September 2025, with the Confederation of African Football (Caf) yet to announce an official date for the group stage draw.
Full preliminary round qualifying results, decided by aggregate score over two legs, are as follows: Djibouti 1-4 South Sudan; Chad 0-8 Burundi; Somalia 0-0 Mauritius (Somalia advanced 4-2 on penalties); Seychelles 1-2 Lesotho; Eritrea 4-1 Eswatini; Sao Tome and Principe 0-4 Ethiopia.