Is Nigeria at Risk of Missing the 2026 World Cup? The Super Eagles Only Have Themselves to Blame

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00:00We have a very, very tense situation happening over here in the AFCON qualifiers.

00:06Nigeria, for the first time in a long time, is at risk for not qualifying for the World Cup.

00:12Dun-dun-dun.

00:13Dun-dun-dun for sure.

00:15It's not looking good.

00:16It's not looking good.

00:17They've struggled through their first six matches of qualifiers.

00:21They've gone through three coaching changes in qualifiers so far,

00:25despite having stars like the likes of Osiman, Basi, Iwobi.

00:32The list goes on and on.

00:33Boney face.

00:35And so there's just been a lot of talk about the fact that people don't understand

00:38why this team is struggling so much, why they're sitting behind Rwanda,

00:42why they're sitting behind their neighbors in Benin.

00:45South Africa is leading the group right now.

00:48And so basically they have to win out to secure their chance at being at the next World Cup.

00:53And so how do you guys feel about the chances?

00:56What do you guys think is going wrong?

00:58How do we fix this?

01:00Or what does this even mean?

01:02This means Wahala, Wahala Day.

01:06Continue.

01:07No, I mean, as a Cameroonian, it makes me laugh.

01:09It makes me smile.

01:10Wow.

01:11It's good.

01:11It's good to see our neighbors up north struggling.

01:13It means that it'll be a good time because they'll be having to watch the World Cup from home.

01:19And generally, generally when you have teams in world football that have a lot of talent

01:26like France, like the Netherlands, like England, you're able to take all that talent, put it

01:30together and make a run to the World Cup for the most part unbeaten.

01:33Even on the continent, Morocco has been able to do that.

01:36So what it speaks to, it's very obvious.

01:38It speaks to mismanagement.

01:39Yeah.

01:39It speaks to mismanagement across the federation.

01:42It speaks to mismanagement from a coaching perspective.

01:44You fire three coaches during a qualifying run.

01:47You've mismanaged the situation.

01:48But it's also on the star players because if you have players like Oseeman, you have

01:52players like Boniface, you have players like Iwobi, you have players like Basi, these people

01:55play for very, very top teams, for very, very elite institutions.

02:00So you guys need to be able to take things together.

02:02And maybe the federation, maybe there's issues behind the scenes that we don't know about.

02:06But if countries like Benin and Rwanda are able to put a body of work together, a

02:15qualification process together that is better than Nigeria's, and Nigeria has a certain

02:20level of quality in their players that Rwanda and South Africa and Benin don't, then there's

02:25an issue with the players.

02:27So the first issue is the players.

02:29I think we've said it on this podcast before, too.

02:34We've kind of raised an eyebrow at the way that the Nigerian team appears on social media,

02:39where they go to camp, how...

02:41The Snapchat, the vibe, the dancing around.

02:43How Snapchat can kind of get involved, the dancing, the jokes, the offering money to people

02:47on the bus, this, that, and the third.

02:49You have to win games because otherwise it's a bit unprofessional.

02:52To that point, recently Chelsea legend John Ubi Mikkel was speaking about how he feels

02:59like there's a little bit of too much jokiness in the sense where he feels that a lot of

03:05the Nigerian players who were born outside of Nigeria more than likely not saw Nigeria

03:12as their second choice.

03:13And so when they go to play for Nigeria, they're not necessarily taking it at the level of seriousness

03:18as you might if you were playing for England or you were playing for France.

03:22And he thinks that that's contributing to the amount that they've struggled.

03:26Whereas on the converse, South Africa is made of mostly homegrown players,

03:30players who play in the domestic league that's sitting on top of the group.

03:34And so it's raising all this discussion about, like, do you focus on, like,

03:38raising up the players who play in your domestic league,

03:41or do you continue to go out and grab players who play in other countries throughout the diaspora?

03:45However, if you are a Nigerian fan, there is a tournament coming up that you can watch,

03:49and that is AFCON this December on BN Sports.

03:52Stay tuned.

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