World Cup Congo vs. Uzbekistan

We were thrilled to be able to grab tickets for the Congo versus Uzbekistan World Cup game last Saturday night in Atlanta (6/27/2026)

It was incredibly exciting. The atmosphere was totally electric inside the stadium as well as all of the surrounding areas in downtown Atlanta. There appeared to be thousands of Congolese fans or Congo fans, I should say. The mixture was a lot that were from Congo but also a ton of people that were local to Atlanta or had come from around the country for the game, flying their Congo flags, wearing Congo jerseys and cheering enthusiastically.

My family was able to go—so my wife, my son, my daughter my three grandchildren—were all able to be there at the game. We were seriously pumped.

We had fabulous seats that were right along the penalty line or the box on the end where Congo was on offense on the first half of the game. We felt they scored in that half, but the ref called it back, saying that there had been a foul as the Congo player advanced toward the goal. We thought it was a poor call.

I ran into a couple of friends there—the granddaughter of old friends Bill and Effie Rule, in an accidental encounter. Also ran into a friend from Congo, Eric Kamba, who lives in Boston. But among the thousands and thousands of people—actually over 68,000 inside the stadium—it was really hard to connect with somebody unless you just happened to bump into them by accident.

So now the Congo Leopards will move on to the knock-out round and play England on Wednesday night. Really hoping they have a great game and can beat England.

One of the really cool aspects of the event was the way fans celebrated together—even from opposing teams. People supporting opposite sides posed for photos together, grinned, high-fived, and just thrived on the electric atmosphere.

Jimmy Shafe, Board Member, Education Congo

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