No African team has ever gone past the quarter-finals of a FIFA World Cup, but a few players who could have represented African nations have won the biggest trophy in football.
Click through the gallery above to see 11 World Cup champions who had the option of playing for African nations!
Many remember Ghana's heartbreak in the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, when they looked like they had scored a winner in the 120th minute before Luis Suarez saved the ball on the Uruguay goal line with his hands.
Asamoah Gyan had the chance to decide the tie with the subsequent penalty to book Ghana's ticket for the semis, but his spot-kick hit the crossbar. The Black Stars were defeated in the following shootout, and Africa is still waiting for its first ever semi-finalist as a result.
However, a few players with African roots did manage to lift the famous Jules Rimet trophy.
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Back in 1998, France's World Cup-winning squad featured Zinedine Zidane and Patrick Vieira, who were both eligible for African nations. Zidane was born in France but could have played for Algeria, the birth country of his parents, while Vieira was born in Senegal but left the African nation when he was just eight years old.
Germany's 2014 World Cup-winning team featured Jerome Boateng and Sami Khedira. The latter is of Tunisian descent, with his father having been born in the African nation, while Boateng, has a Ghanaian father. Both players, though, were born in Germany and opted to represent their country of birth.
Read: 10 French Superstars Who Could Have Played For African Countries
France's 2018 FIFA World Cup winners also had several stars with African heritage – you can see some of them in the gallery above!
Do you think the players in the gallery could also have lifted the World Cup with the African countries they were eligible for? Have your say in the comments section below.
