For the Umpteenth Time, Eritrean Players Fail to Return Home as Seven Go Missing After Match

In what is now a recurring and worrying trend, Eritrean players went for an international match and failed to return.

Eritrean football is in the spotlight for the wrong reasons again following reports that seven players did not return home after turning out for the national team in a 2027 Africa Cup of Nations pre-qualifier.

The team had secured a big win, having beaten Eswatini 4-1 on aggregate with the second leg played way last weekend, when they won 2-1.

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While the rest of the team flew back from neigbouring South Africa, a BBC report says that seven did not return with their whereabouts still unknown, leaving the country in a spot of bother at a time when a major ceremony had been organized back home to welcome them for securing a ticket to the AFCON 2027 qualifiers.

“Only 10 of the 24-man squad were based in Eritrea and just three of those players, including team captain Ablelom Teklezghi, have now returned,” says the BBC which, also reports that some of the missing players, who include goalkeeper Kubrom Solomon and veteran winger Medhanie Redie, were spotted in South Africa.

Spokesperson of Eritrea's Sport and Culture Commission posted photos of some of the returning players and staff at the country’s embassy in Cairo where they made a stopover on their way back to Asmara but not the entire squad was present and there has been silence from the government over the issue.

This is the latest of a series of reports about Eritrean players going missing after an international match.

In 2009, the entire team failed to return home from a match in Kenya, with only the coach and an official making it back, while in 2013, 15 players and the team doctor were granted asylum in Uganda after they absconded.

Two years later, 10 senior squad players refused to return home after playing a World Cup qualifier in Botswana and in 2019, seven players from the Eritrean under-20 side went missing after playing in a CECAFA match in Uganda.

These are just some of the reported cases but there are many other incidents of Eritrean players going missing from international assignments in the region that have also been cited.

Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans continue to seek asylum abroad over what rights groups have described as a repressive regime back home.