taken the opportunity to abscond. In December 2012, 17 Eritrean footballers and the team's doctor vanished after the CECAFA championship tournament in Uganda and all applied for asylum in the country. Four players of Red Sea FC defected after a CAF Champions League 2006 match in Nairobi, Kenya, and up to 12 members of the national side after the 2007 CECAFA Cup in Tanzania. Another 6 players sought asylum in Angola in March 2007 after a group 6 qualifying game for the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations. Three more players from the national team sought asylum in Sudan. Eritrea withdrew from the 2008 CECAFA Cup, and from the common qualifying tournament shared by the 2010 World Cup and the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations. Given the number of players seeking asylum, the Eritrean government began requiring athletes to pay a 100,000 nakfa surety before traveling abroad. Eritrea returned to the 2009 CECAFA Cup in Nairobi. A young squad was assembled with just 12 days' training. In Group B, they gained a surprise draw with Zimbabwe, lost narrowly to Rwanda, and beat Somalia 3–1. They were easily beaten 4–0 in the quarter-finals by Tanzania. Twelve squad members failed to report for the return flight, and sought the assistance of the Refugee Consortium of Kenya. They were believed to be in hiding in Eastleigh, an eastern suburb of Nairobi home to many immigrants. Nicholas Musonye, the secretary-general of CECAFA, feared that the government might react by refusing to let the team travel abroad in future. The twelve players were later granted interim asylum by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kenya. Eleven of these players have since travelled to Adelaide in Australia with two of them, Samuel Ghebrehiwet and Ambes Sium, signing for Gold Coast United in the A-League in August 2011. In the first round of the qualifiers for the 2018 World Cup, ten players from the Eritrean football team refused to return home after playing a World Cup qualifying match in Botswana and were granted asylum there. In September 2019, four members of the national Under-20 team sought asylum in Uganda after the team qualified for the semi-finals of a competition. A few months later in December, a further seven players selected for the international team refused to return home and sought asylum in Uganda after a tournament. In October 2021, five footballers from the country's under-20 women's