Yoane Wissa scored for the RD Congo against Portugal on Wednesday in the team's first group match at the Coupe du monde, a goal that landed five years after an acid attack at his home nearly cost him his sight.
The strike mattered because Wissa is not just back on a world stage; he is back after a violence that could have ended a career before it fully settled. The forward said he recovered his sight completely after three to six months, but he still needed eye drops and said the attack delayed his move to England long enough that he missed preseason and arrived too late for the coach to include him in the team.
That was the reality of 1 July 2021, when Wissa was a player for FC Lorient and Laëtitia Penvern entered his home shortly before midnight, tried to take his child and threw acid at his face. He told the court in January 2025 that when he came out of the toilet he saw something red, kicked and screamed, then felt the liquid burn before he struggled to breathe. He later had eye surgery and said a doctor told him he would need drops for life if the treatment had come later. The case ended with Penvern convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison by the cour d'assises du Morbihan.
The attack did not only leave one family living with the aftermath. A young woman from Gambia was also burned in Vannes the next day, and Wissa's wife later described the scene of seeing him burned, skin raw and eyes bandaged, as the most traumatic thing she had ever seen. That is the gap inside Wissa's comeback story: the goal against Portugal belongs to the present, but the injury still shaped the route that brought him there.
What comes next for Wissa is simpler and harder at once. The move was made years ago, the sight returned, and the damage still echoes in the way he talks about his eyes, his body and the delay that followed him into England. The next chapter is not whether he can still play; Wednesday answered that. It is how long the football can keep outrunning the memory.
