"These players are poor. It was their first time flying." That line, from a source close to the Eritrean national team, tells you everything you need to know about what happened after their AFCON qualifying win over Eswatini on March 31.
Seven players — mostly substitutes — vanished following the match at Somhlolo National Stadium. Coach Hesham Yakan confirmed it to Reuters. So did George Ghebreslassie, an Eritrean exile who runs a non-profit supporting Eritrean refugees. The players haven't been seen since.
A country with a history of exactly this
This isn't a first. Eritrea banned its national teams from travelling abroad after several players from its under-20 side fled to Uganda back in 2019. This year was the country's return to AFCON qualifying — their first campaign since 2008 — and within weeks, the same thing has happened again.
Yakan, a former Egypt defender who played at the 1990 World Cup, didn't dress it up. "I do not think they will continue playing football," he said. "I believe they will try to find economic opportunities in wealthier countries." The squad already featured players based in Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden — guys who had already made that move. These seven are now trying to do the same thing.
Eritrea won the tie convincingly, 4-1 on aggregate — a 2-0 first leg win in Morocco (they can't host at home due to stadium requirements) followed by a 2-1 win in Eswatini. On paper, a good week for Eritrean football. In reality, the squad is now seven players shorter.
"Nothing has changed"
Ghebreslassie, who left Eritrea himself in 1999, put it plainly: "It shows the kind of situation we have in Eritrea. We thought things would change, but nothing has changed. People have become hopeless in their own country."
Eritrea has been under President Isaias Afwerki since independence in 1993. Human rights groups have consistently described his government as repressive. The Minister of Information declined to comment. The national football federation didn't respond at all.
"It happens quite a lot," Ghebreslassie said. That might be the most damning sentence in the whole story.
