Thanks to the World Cup, DR Congo Have Found Hope

Thomas Tuchel’s side came through their group unbeaten; DR Congo finished third in theirs. The hierarchy appears obvious.

From Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, it must look rather different. For the Central African side, playing England is not an inconvenience in somebody else’s route to the final. It’s proof that a country which spent more than half a century carrying one of the World Cup’s most misremembered stories has finally got the chance to tell another one.

The last time the nation appeared at a World Cup, it was 1974 and it was called Zaire. They were the first sub-Saharan African side to reach the finals, arriving in West Germany as reigning African champions.

What followed became one of football’s cruellest bits of shorthand: a 9-0 defeat to Yugoslavia, three group-stage losses, and Mwepu Ilunga running out from the wall to boot away a Brazil free-kick before it had been taken.

For years, that image was replayed as a joke about African football. It was never that simple. The players were caught inside the pressure and neglect of Mobutu’s regime, with bonuses withheld and threats hanging over them after the Yugoslavia defeat.

Zaire did not leave as a bad team that had forgotten the rules; it left carrying the weight of a country that had turned football into a political prop, then abandoned its players when the performance no longer suited the script. That is the history this side has been playing against.

When Axel Tuanzebe scored in extra time against Jamaica in March to send DR Congo to this World Cup, the country declared a public holiday. It had been 52 years. When Yoane Wissa scored against Portugal in Houston, it was DR Congo’s first World Cup goal. The 1–1 draw was their first point.

Then came Uzbekistan. A goal down at half-time and facing another early exit, DR Congo needed something different. Wissa scored the penalty that levelled it. Fiston Mayele put them ahead. Wissa made it three in stoppage time, sending the Leopards into the knockouts with their first ever World Cup win.

Afterwards, Wissa spoke about the conflict in eastern Congo, the people back home, and how far this team had travelled to be here. “We write our story with a black pen,” he said. The old story was written by other people: broadcasters looking for a laugh, a dictatorship looking for propaganda, a football world that rarely bothered to ask what sat behind the image.

DR Congo is a country of extraordinary scale, energy and resource, but also one living with in crisis. In the east, fighting involving armed groups, government forces and a shifting cast of militias has displaced millions, uprooted families and made ordinary life feel permanently provisional.

This team is carrying a flag for people who have spent years being asked to endure more than any country should. A place in the last 32 cannot soften the reality of it, but for a few weeks, it has offered a moment in which DR Congo is being seen not only through war, displacement and loss, but through ambition, noise, pride and a team still alive at the World Cup.

This team feels more like a reflection of modern Congolese football: a group threaded through the diaspora, built across French, Belgian and English academies and leagues, but connected by a shared sense of what the shirt means. Wissa knows English football. So do Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Tuanzebe and Chancel Mbemba.

They will not walk into Mercedes-Benz Stadium against England on Wednesday in awe of the names on the other side. Sure, England should still win. They have the deeper squad, the bigger stars and the expectation. 

But that is not really the measure of this game for DR Congo. They have already done what Zaire never got the chance to do: show that they belong here on their own terms. And for one night in Atlanta, against one of the game’s biggest institutions, they get to keep writing.