Eddie Howe said on the eve of DR Congo’s opener that a good World Cup could kick‑start Yoane Wissa’s Newcastle United career, putting the 29‑year‑old’s tournament minutes squarely at the centre of his recovery plan as DR Congo prepare to face Portugal.
Howe pointed to late‑season promise when asked about Wissa, noting there were flashes of real quality in his appearances toward the end of last season but that the striker had not been given a sustained run of matches — in part because of Will Osula’s form. Wissa, who missed the first half of the campaign through injury and a knee problem suffered while on international duty, started just four Premier League games and finished the year with three goals in all competitions.
Newcastle paid £55m for Wissa from Brentford last summer, a fee that set expectations high. He returned from injury earlier this year to play in DR Congo’s successful playoff campaign and now arrives at the World Cup in Group K, which opens with his nation facing Portugal at 6pm; Colombia and Uzbekistan complete the group. For Newcastle, the tournament is an unusual off‑season audition — a chance for Wissa to build the fitness and confidence the club hoped to buy when they signed him.
Howe said the World Cup is a “great showcase and opportunity” for Wissa to rebuild both fitness and belief, and he stressed that the players signed last summer have not yet fully shown what they can do, adding that next season will be an important one for them all. That public framing makes Wissa’s matches for DR Congo more than a national duty: they are a practical timetable for whether he arrives at St James’ Park in July closer to the player Newcastle imagine.
The friction is obvious. A £55m signing whose debut season was sliced by injury and who managed only four league starts and three goals presents a clear gap between cost and contribution. The knee setback while on international duty underlines how fragile that recovery has been; the late flashes Howe described are real, but they remain intermittent. The World Cup offers intensity and high‑pressure minutes — exactly the circumstances in which Newcastle will judge whether those flashes can be turned into a sustained level of performance.
Wissa’s immediate future is simple and binary: earn rhythm and confidence in Qatar, then return to Newcastle for pre‑season in markedly better physical shape than he finished the domestic year. Howe has publicly bet on that sequence, arguing the tournament could help Wissa come back and “help us.” How Wissa performs against Portugal, Colombia and Uzbekistan will determine whether he arrives back as a player who can make the £55m fee start to look like a shrewd outlay, or as an unsettled signing whose best hope is another season of work to prove he can be relied on week in, week out.
