{"id":30572,"date":"2026-06-07T20:40:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/world-cup-2026-dr-congo-friendly-to-be-played-behind-closed-doors\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T20:40:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:40:04","slug":"world-cup-2026-dr-congo-friendly-to-be-played-behind-closed-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/world-cup-2026-dr-congo-friendly-to-be-played-behind-closed-doors\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: DR Congo friendly to be played behind closed doors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">BBC Sport understands that none of DR Congo&#8217;s players &#8211; who all play for clubs outside of the country &#8211; have visited their homeland recently, but some support staff and fans have travelled from there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The squad are finalising their preparations in Marbella in Spain after a 10-day training camp in Belgium which included a 0-0 draw with Denmark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is the first time DR Congo has qualified for the World Cup since 1974 when they competed as Zaire, finishing bottom of their group after defeats by Scotland, Brazil and Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They plan to base themselves in Houston during the tournament and are scheduled to open their Group K campaign there against Portugal on 17 June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They will then travel to the Mexican city of Guadalajara to face Colombia before returning to the United States to take on Uzbekistan in Atlanta.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The outbreak in eastern DR Congo has been caused by a rare species of Ebola known as Bundibugyo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is currently no vaccine for this species and the World Health Organisation has said it could take up to nine months for a jab to be ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c30y35lq0dvo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BBC Sport understands that none of DR Congo&#8217;s players &#8211; who all play for clubs outside of the country &#8211; have visited their homeland recently, but some support staff and fans have travelled from there. The squad are finalising their preparations in Marbella in Spain after a 10-day training camp in Belgium which included a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-africa","category-world-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30574,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30572\/revisions\/30574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}