The Leopards of the DRC and the national Syli of Guinea meet this Saturday, November 16 at 8 p.m. at the Alassane Ouattara stadium in Ebimpé in Abidjan (Ivory Coast).
This match is being played as part of the 5th day of the CAN 2025 qualifiers.
Following a muscular alert, Congolese defender Dylan Batubinsika is spared for this Saturday’s match against Guinea. He will return to the group for the match against Ethiopia next Tuesday.
The coach-manager of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sebastien Desabre, promised, during the pre-match press conference, to keep his team of the starting players, and to modify it instead for the last day’s match against Ethiopia, in Kinshasa.
“We hope that this match will be of good quality to give a good image of African football. Afterwards, there is no pressure, we will go towards achieving our objectives. We achieved our objective, but that’s not why we’re going to demobilize. We will play our game thinking of ourselves first. If we are better than Guinea, tomorrow we will win the match. So, we can already assume that there will be a little more turnover in the second match than in the first. Seeing some players evolve and giving a little more playing time”declared Sébastien Desabre.
Against Ethiopia, the DRC coach also promises to address the problem of yellow cards:
“a problem to manage in the last match against Ethiopia is that of yellow cards. We have players who have yellow cards, in the event of another yellow, they will be suspended from the first match of the final phase of CAN Morocco 2025.”
A revenge to take
The national Syli and the Leopards meet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, for the second time during the same year, after the historic quarter-finals of February 2, at the Alassane Ouattara stadium, ended with the victory of the Congolese 3 -1.
Guinea opened the scoring, through Mohamed Bayo (21st), from the penalty spot, the Leopards subsequently drowned their opponents with three goals from Chancel Mbemba (27th), Yoane Wissa, from the penalty spot, before Arthur Maswaku ( 82nd) seals the Congolese victory.
For the rest of this competition, the national eleven of the DRC finished in 4th place, after the defeat in the small final, on penalties, in front of Bafana-Bafana of South Africa.
