Suddenly, those who run our football have realised that Nigeria’s flag won’t be hoisted among the comity of soccer-playing nations at the 2026 World Cup. They have pressed the panic button as if the World Cup qualification fixtures were drawn yesterday. They are experts in creating needless tension among the players, coaches and the over 200 million Nigeria. It is no rocket science that Nigeria may not qualify for the Mundial. Some of the new decisions being adopted now ought to have been done before the qualifiers began last year. If Nigeria fails to qualify for the Mundial (God forbid), will our soccer chieftains apologise to Nigeria and quit the soccer scene here for the good of the game?
Coach Eric Chelle, whenever you have discussed with all the players in Europe, you could arrive in Abuja one week before the contingent’s departure to Rwanda in our characteristic style of arriving aboard a charter jet. That is the way our people run her football-fire brigade system. We have just woken up and we expect the world to wait for us.
You would have come to formally assume the most unreliable job in the universe as the Super Eagles coach where every game must be won with goals aplenty. It is the job in which those watching the team play at the stands during matches feel they can do better than the coach – in this case Eric Chelle. Yet, they don’t submit their applications for the job, whenever there is a vacancy. This writer belongs to this group without apologises since for us in Nigeria, football is like a religion. Football unites Nigerians. It is a game where the father and wife belong to different clubs as supporters. It is a game here in Nigeria where children mock their daddy to the bones whenever his European club loses a game. Daddy takes the harassment on the chin, waiting patiently for his turn in the weeks ahead.
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Interestingly, daddy, mummy and the loving kids come under a family umbrella to support the Super Eagles. Such is the allure the Super Eagles enjoy here. Chelle, the passion and incredible followership of the Eagles when they are playing anywhere in the world is such that the streets around the country are desolate with the young, the old, boys and girls moving around before the the game to look for here to watch their idols on match days.
With exactly 40 days to the battle against Rwanda inside the Amahoro Stadium, it is to interrogate Chelle’s thoughts to find out if he will continue fielding the slow-moving Eagles or replace them with a squad of energetic and skillful players running down the Rwandans on the pitch, covering the blades of grass and spending less than 60 seconds to retrieve the ball when they lose its possession. Again, would we be watching a selfless bunch of players playing the game as if their lives depended on it? Would the players aim at scoring 80 per cent of the goal-scoring opportunities that they would create against Rwanda and Zimbabwe?
Showboating during games doesn’t translate to victories at dusk because it is the side that slams the ball into the net as many times as the openings are created that win. Therefore, Chelle shouldn’t hesitate to replace unserious players since he has a must-win mandate for the remaining six matches in her quest to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.
The 46-year-old admitted that the road to glory would be tough but insisted that both he and the team are determined to claim African football’s biggest prize. We pray O’ Lord! “Yes, it’s going to be difficult to win because there are 24 very good teams and some very good coaches,” Eric Chelle told CAFonline.
“I know I’ve got a team that’s out for revenge, and I’m out for revenge too, so we’re going to have a lot of fun.
“We are out for revenge. We know what this team is capable of, and our goal is clear—to lift the trophy in Morocco.” I digress!
Yes, Chelle was at the 2025 AFCON draws as other nations’ coaches in Morocco in December. Need I remind Chelle that he won’t be in Morocco if Nigeria are not the winner of the sole qualification in Group C for the 2026 World Cup?
It would interest you to know that whilst you were junketing in Europe to rub minds with our foreign legion, South Africa’s Bafana Bafana’s coach, Hugo Broos provided the arithmetic and geometrical perspectives to the ticket race stressing that South Africa need 16 or 17 more points to add to their seven points to edge out Nigeria.
According to Hugo Broos: “We now have seven points, and then I count six (in March), it’s 13. And then we have four games, which tally up to 12 points. I think if you have 16-17 points, you have qualified,” Broos told journalists as per Africa Football.
“All the teams are still in the running. Therefore, March can be a key month, and things will be a little bit clearer. And then after that, we can say, for example, Rwanda is out. Again, that’s why it’s very important to win the two games (against Lesotho and Benin).”
“You know we have to be realistic. If tomorrow South Africa qualifies for the World Cup, we don’t have to talk about quarter-finals and semi-finals,” Broos added.
What Broos’ permutations show is that he expects South Africa to grab the ticket with 23 points, including that of Nigeria’s six games which would be played in South Africa. Perhaps, it is the Nigeria game that the Bafana Bafana coach thinks that his boys can draw hence the 16 out of 18 points he has settled for. Fair enough.
So, what are Nigeria’s permutations? Are we just massaging our egos with the thought of being able to win the remaining six games? A big possibility, but are our players ready to fight to the finish lines in the six matches left? Perhaps, we may need to ask the NFF if truly the players, coaches and backroom staff have been paid their outstanding bonuses and entitlements. This is the crux on which Nigeria’s chances of another Mundial appearance lie.
It would be a big shame if Nigeria fails to qualify for the next World Cup in 2026 despite the increase in the participating countries. The football federation would have no reason to give if Nigerians are made to support other nations, not theirs. Besides, another generation of young boys who have evolved from the FIFA grade competition such as Victor Osimhen would have been wasted due to the administrative incompetence of people who specialise in planning for events whose dates had been made public at least two years earlier.
Perhaps, such a failure is what the game needs for the government to interfere in how the federation’s elections are conducted. This idea that only a selected group of people are eligible to participate in the body’s election is unacceptable. Nigeria is a football nation given the exploits of our players in European football. We need not be seers to know where the problems of our football lie.
We are tired of all these needless permutations for Nigeria to participate in global competitions other sports-loving countries use to change the worldview of their countries. It hurts talking about a likely failure because people who ought to plan early for assignments such as this wait until the roof falls on their heads before doing what ought to have been done years ago. Would there be any reason for the present board of the federation to remain in office if they fail to qualify the Super Eagles for the next World Cup? You tell me.
