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A Costa Coffee in Purley was the unlikely venue for Gabriel Zakuani’s meeting in 2022 with Sébastien Desabre, the newly appointed manager of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but they were there on a secret mission. Aaron Wan-Bissaka was at Manchester Unitedand holding out for an England call-up after representing the under-21s. But Zakuani, who was raised in London but born in the Congolese capital Kinshasa and played for DRC at three Africa Cup of Nations tournaments, had different plans.
“The manager contacted me out of the blue and he was in London,” the former Peterborough defender says. “It was a very random trip – he just wanted to watch players that potentially could play for Congo. We met at Costa and less than an hour into the conversation I had rung up Aaron’s family and we were at Aaron’s house. We were having a conversation with his mum and dad about potentially getting him to change his nationality. It snowballed from there.”
Wan-Bissaka joined West Ham in 2024 and had been tipped for a call-up from Thomas Tuchel in March 2025. When that didn’t come, Zakuani seized his moment.
“We thought it was the right sign to strike,” he says. “We put our offer on the table. We had all his paperwork ready to sign and he agreed. I think that was his last opportunity maybe to play for England. He knew that we really wanted him.”
Wan-Bissaka surely has no regrets after switching allegiances in August last year. He joined Burnley’s Axel Tuanzebe – born in DR Congo but raised in England just like Zakuani who recruited him in his role as a consultant for the country’s federation – in the Leopards team that went to the Afcon in Morocco and on Tuesday face a playoff in Mexico to qualify for the World Cup.
DRC came through the African playoffs in November by beating Cameroon and Nigeria, and if they beat Jamaica in Guadalajara they will play at the World Cup for the first time since their historic 1974 appearance as the first sub-Saharan Africa team to qualify for a finals, when they were known as Zaire.
Zakuani’s role as a talent spotter began when he was playing, after months of attempting to persuade Yannick Bolasie to turn out for DRC finally came to fruition. Zakuani joked at the time that he “practically had to tie him down to get him on the plane in the end” and things have changed as results have steadily improved over the past decade.
“It’s become a lot easier to attract the players and the way we’re performing I think is the first thing, because that’s the first thing players look at if it’s an opportunity for them to potentially play at a World Cup,” he says. “I think we’ve become sort of bankers in Afcon as well. Afcon used to be a hard thing for DRC to qualify for, but now it seems a bit more straightforward, the sort of quality we’ve got, which has changed the views of a lot of players who were in two minds about joining.”
Zakuani, who speaks eight languages, is an assistant coach for DRC’s Under-20s and spends the rest of his time scouring European leagues for players with Congolese heritage.
“I used to do a lot of commentating so if I saw someone with a surname that looks Congolese then I would investigate and that’s sort of how it happened at first,” he says. “But now because I’m working very closely with the national team, there’s got to be a lot more thought put into it and a lot of looking around and I’ll turn up to games and training sessions.
“It’s quite intense in terms of trying to really track players down there and to have a conversation with them. Being captain of the national team for quite a long time, it helps that transition. I’ve got that connection, that direct link to recommend them straight away. They can go in and get the paperwork sorted just to lock them in for Congo.”
Joel Ndala, an England Under-20s forward on loan from Manchester City at Sheffield Wednesday, is firmly in Zakuani’s sights for the future. “We’re working hard on that one,” he says.
There could be plenty of others who suddenly show more interest should DRC seal a World Cup spot. “We have got players in the pipeline,” Zakuani says. “There’s things that have been in the background happening for about a year now. But because we’ve got to this position in the playoffs, we need to just stick with what we’ve got, what’s worked, and we’ll pursue that if we do get to the World Cup.”
Emulating the famous 1974 Zaire side has been the inspiration during a qualification campaign in which DRC finished two points behind Senegal in their group.
“When the manager took charge, that was his goal,” says Zakuani. “The federation set him a clear instruction to get into the World Cup. We’ve done it the hard way by getting through the playoffs and now we’re believing that we can actually get there. The country believes that we can do it – we can’t make it 52 years without getting to a World Cup. I think it’s the right time. It’s the right time with the team. We don’t want to miss this opportunity.”
