Congo DR U20

Chancel Mbemba came through this age group before he became the senior team's most-capped player.

The team's first match, a 2-1 defeat to Angola in Luanda on 30 April 1988, was played under a different name for the country itself — Zaire. Since then the age group has answered to Les Petits Léopards, taking the senior side's blue, red and yellow.

Their one Africa Cup of Nations U20 title came in 2007. Appearances since have been sparser than that win might suggest — 1989, 2013, 2023 and 2025 mark the tournaments they reached, and the closest they have come back to the podium was 2025, when a quarter-final went to extra time against South Africa and ended in defeat. At the Tournoi Maurice Revello, the record reads the same way: no trophy, but a bronze medal match in 2026, lost to Côte d'Ivoire.

Home games are staged at the Stade des Martyrs de la Pentecôte, built with Chinese assistance between 1993 and 1994 and opened that September. Its current name was attached three years later, in memory of four Congolese political figures executed on the site in 1966.

Ghana, Senegal and South Africa remain the sides DR Congo's youth teams measure themselves against, and it was South Africa who ended the run in extra time at the last Africa Cup of Nations U20.