The Super Eagles delicate position in the world cup qualifiers could see them miss out on a spot at the 2026 tournament as they are currently 5th in the six team group, four points behind the leaders Rwanda, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
As a matter of fact the team is yet to pick a win in the series drawing with Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and South Africa before losing 1-2 to Benin Republic in their last game in the series, which will resume in March.
Looking ahead to their games against Rwanda and Zimbabwe on a proposed date of 17th and 24th of March respectively. A player of the team has looked back at their campaign and blamed it on their poor start partly due to the poor start under former coach Jose Peseiro.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the player told our correspondent after the post match conference of the 1-2 loss to Rwanda in their final AFCON qualifiers game that the rift between Peseiro and captain William Troost-Ekong played a huge part in the poor start.
” We (Super Eagles) started the last two world cup qualifiers set of games with back to back wins. This time around we started by dropping four points. So we started playing catch up from the get go. You have to look at issues this way. The rift between Ekong and the coach (Peseiro) meant we played an unfamiliar pair at center back in two straight games. Ekong didn’t even make the squad”, he stated.
” Ekong patched up with Peseiro before the AFCON and the result was clear for all to see. He was the MVP at the tournament. Sadly he hasn’t played in any world cup qualifiers because he became injured after the AFCON. We hope to have him around for the games in March”.
Ade Emmanuel
