DR Congo, who were forced to cancel their pre-tournament training camp due to the Ebola outbreak, progressed to the next round of the World Cup for the first time, as several of international football’s minnows continued to defy expectations at the expanded tournament.
The central African team qualified on Saturday evening after a 3-1 win over Uzbekistan, and joined several lower-ranked teams, including Cape Verde and Bosnia and Herzegovina who have beaten the odds to reach the World Cup knockouts for the first time. DR Congo will now face England in Atlanta on July 1.
This year’s deadly Ebola outbreak, which has already killed more than 300 people in DR Congo, severely disrupted the team’s World Cup preparations. After ditching the planned training camp in Kinshasa, the Congolese squad spent three weeks in quarantine in Belgium before being allowed to travel to the US.