The Democratic Republic of Congo returns to the World Cup after 52 years. The African team debuts against Porgual this Wednesday (17th), at 2pm. The match, valid for Group K of the tournament, will be broadcast on CazéTV.
The country’s only previous participation in the tournament occurred in 1974, when it was still called Zaire.
The players from that team entered the field against Brazil under threat of death. In the previous game, they had lost to Yugoslavia 9-0. The dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, president of the country at the time, warned that if the team lost by four goals the athletes would not return home alive.
The context helps explain one of the most emblematic scenes of that World Cup. At the end of the match in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Brazil was leading 2-0 and a foul was called in favor of the team at the end of the game. While the players were deciding who would take the kick, defender Mwepu Ilunga came out of the wall and kicked the ball away.
The move became a source of criticism around the world at the time. But years later the player revealed, in an interview with the French newspaper L’Equipe, the pressure experienced by the squad. “Nobody there knew what we were going through,” he said.
Brazil needed to beat Zaire by three goals to advance to the knockout stages, a system in which whoever loses is eliminated from the competition. On the morning of June 22, 1974, the Sheet The headline read: “The national team is resurrected today” and treated the opposing team as “the weakest in the World Cup”. The scenario indicated a rout, but that was not what was seen on the field.
Despite the 3-0 score, Zairean goalkeeper Kasady had a great performance. On the Brazilian side, nervousness took over. “I couldn’t bear to look at the clock on my back anymore,” Brazil goalkeeper Leão told Sheet the next day. “Their defense took everything, our team missed shots and I couldn’t do anything. I confess I was desperate.”
The difficulty contrasted with expectations and also with Zaire’s recent trajectory. The command was coach Blagoje Vidinić, a Yugoslav born in what is now North Macedonia. With him, the team qualified for the World Cup by beating Morocco 3-0, in December 1973, in Kinshasa, capital of Congo.
The campaign turned the coach into a national hero, as it was the country’s first qualification for the competition, and gave the players prizes, such as apartments, cars and holidays in Europe. But the structure began to collapse even before the World Cup.
The rigid training program drawn up by Vidinić was delayed by the celebrations promoted by Mobutu after the classification. In Germany, after the 2-0 defeat to Scotland in their debut, Zaire’s players discovered that they would not receive the promised payments. “They justified that they were unmotivated for the game against Yugoslavia because of this”, says historian Celso Unzelte.
Without financial guarantees, the internal environment became more complicated. In the third goal conceded during the defeat of Yugoslavia, a manager entered the field and replaced the goalkeeper, disrespecting Vidinić’s technical authority. The coach remained until the end of the game for ethical reasons, but resigned immediately after the defeat to Brazil.
Brazilian players adopted caution before the match. Defender Wilson Piazza recalled the defeat to Sweden the previous year as a warning. “It was considered the easiest game and we lost. This could also happen with Zaire, couldn’t it?”, he said at the time. Attacking midfielder Leivinha also preached organization instead of a disorganized attempt to find the necessary balance.
On the field, however, individualism prevailed. Brazilian number 10, Roberto Rivelino, assessed that the need to score three goals compromised the collective game. “We wanted to resolve things alone and we allowed the Africans to be intercepted, who were only concerned about losing a little,” he said. Leão was more direct and said that Brazil “only won by luck”.
For coach Vidinić, that was Zaire’s best performance in the tournament. Unzelte states that the game went down in history as one of the most difficult for the Brazilian team from a psychological point of view.
The post-World Cup was tough for African athletes. “The delegation returned, but was treated as marginal,” said researcher Lycio Vellozo Ribas, author of “The Golden Book of Cups” and “The World of Cups.”
For Ribas, that was also “the worst Brazilian team in performance, due to the level of names, a bad cycle and disappointing results”.
Historian Unzelte states that Zaire’s players, especially those involved in the 9-0 against Yugoslavia, “fell into national disgrace”, driven by the narrative of the dictatorship itself. According to him, the president of Zaire banned the country from competing in the qualifiers for the 1978 World Cup, which took place in Argentina. “Mobutu withdrew investment from football, claiming that the team was not patriotic enough”, he states.
More than half a century later, DR Congo is back at a World Cup. Qualification for 2026 came on March 31, in Guadalajara, with a 1-0 victory over Jamaica in the intercontinental repechage final. This time, he goes to the field without Mobutu’s dictatorial regime and with 52 years of history to tell.
