Sudan U23

Twice they have got within one round of a Sudanese Olympic debut, and twice a single team has closed the door: Nigeria in 2019, Niger four years later. Both exits came at the same stage, the final qualifying round, which is as far as the age group has ever travelled in the Africa U23 Cup of Nations.

The side is not a club in the ordinary sense but the under-23 wing of Sudanese football, run by the Sudan Football Association out of Khartoum. The association traces back to 1936 and joined FIFA twelve years later. It plays under the same red, white, black and green as the senior national team, and answers to the same nickname, Falcons of Jediane — the age group has never been given one of its own.

Khartoum Stadium, with room for 23,000, serves as home ground. The venue's name overlaps confusingly with a separate Al-Hilal Stadium across the Nile in Omdurman, a distinction worth keeping straight given how often the two get folded together in casual reference.

An Olympic men's football tournament has never featured a Sudanese team, and the U23 Cup of Nations has gone unwon by them as well. The two near-misses against Nigeria and Niger stand as the closest the current generation has come, both settled at the final hurdle rather than anywhere earlier in the process.