[niʒɛʁ] – just to get the pronunciation out of the way – is a landlocked country in West Africa named after the Niger river. As a landlocked country with 80% of its area inside the Sahara Desert, economic prospects are rather bleak, which also reflects in Niger’s last rank in the 2018 Human Development Index.

Despite their economic shortcomings, the Nigerien national football team has managed to reach a respectable 106th place in the FIFA World ranking above such nations as Thailand, Latvia and New Zealand! In 2012 and 2013 the team even managed to qualify for the Africa Cup, where they did not manage to win any of their games and consequently did not progress to the knock-out stages.