DR Congo vs Jamaica: World Cup play-off sees Leopards bid to end 52-year absence

Football fans in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been waiting a long time to right the wrongs of their solitary World Cup campaign in 1974.

That was the year US President Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, the Rubix Cube was invented and Muhammad Ali beat George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in the Congolese capital Kinshasa.

Victory for the Leopards in Tuesday’s intercontinental play-off final against Jamaica will end that 52-year wait and guarantee Africa a 10th representative at this year’s tournament in Canada, Mexico and the USA.

“I’d definitely consider it as the biggest game in my football career,” Burnley defender Axel Tuanzebe told Sportsworld on BBC World Service, while former captain Gabriel Zakuani labelled it “the biggest game in our history”.

Should DR Congo win, over 110 million people back home, as well as a huge global diaspora, will pray things go better this time than they did in West Germany, when their country competed as Zaire.

That campaign kicked off poorly with a 2-0 defeat against Scotland, careened off the tracks in a 9-0 humiliation against Yugoslavia and descended into farce during a 3-0 loss to Brazil which produced one of the World Cup’s most memorable moments.

Not in a good way.

“What on Earth did he do that for?” was the question posed by BBC commentator John Motson when right-back Mwepu Ilunga charged out of the defensive wall and booted the ball downfield as Brazil lined up a free-kick on the edge of the Zaire penalty area.

Ilunga received a yellow card, but the damage done to African football’s reputation was more severe, creating an impression that players from the continent did not even know the rules.

“We were not a bad team,” Mohamed Kalambay, one of the goalkeepers in the 1974 squad, told BBC Sporting Witness in 2022.

“When you look at the teams in Africa, there are just a few that have been to the World Cup, but we were there and we deserved it.”

Darker reasons have been suggested for Ilunga’s moment of madness and the team’s underperformance, ranging from unpaid bonuses to threats of violence.

Now a new generation hope to create their own iconic moments to banish those ghosts.

Victory against Jamaica will see them join a group containing Portugal, Uzbekistan and Colombia.

“The aim is to also compete and put on a good show,” said Zakuani, an assistant coach with DR Congo’s Under-20s, “not just be participants, not just be happy to be part of the party, but also to create history”.