Fourth place with just seven points after six matches.
This is the result that no powerful team is happy to accept, simply because it is too humiliating, which means you may think this must be the result of some mid-tier national teams, whose strengths seem to match the reality.
In fact, the Aussies had to learn the hard way in September 2024 in Asia when the Socceroos were initially dumped to fifth after two matches with only a point and no goal in the third round of the Asian qualifiers.
Yet, one national team manages to defy that logic. It’s actually the current position of Nigeria during the 2026 World Cup qualification in Africa.
Like Australia in Asia, Nigeria is in Group C with six teams, but the Super Eagles have achieved just one win, as well as four draws and one defeat so far. This leaves the Nigerian supporters to scratch their heads and wonder why their beloved NT are now in such a bad shape.
In fact, the chaos in Nigeria is so bad that the NT have switched coaches four times, from José Peseiro to now Éric Chelle. It’s a testament to just how terribly managed Super Eagles are being managed at the moment.
This is not the only horrible thing Nigerians have to witness. Nigeria failed to qualify for the 2024 Summer Olympics and recently did not even qualify for the expanded 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup. It’s a stage that has historically been dominated by the West Africans, leaving the U-20 side the only team left available to salvage the crumbling Eagles.
So what’s going wrong with Nigeria at the ongoing 2026 WCQ in Africa? Unlike the situation in Australia, the situation in Nigeria needs to be judged from different angles.
Football is no doubt the most popular sport in the West African nation, and many Nigerians pride themselves on their unlimited amount of talent in their pool.
Nigeria have also played in the FIFA World Cup six times, first appearing in 1994, and also has many memorable records like the 3-2 victory over Spain in the 1998 edition in France to speak of.
Unsurprisingly, Nigeria see making it to the World Cup as not just a duty, but a must for their status on the continent.
However, with just seven points, Nigeria have set up one of its poorest records in the qualifiers. It could not beat Zimbabwe twice, and a humiliating away defeat to neighbouring Benin 2-1, where Nigeria let their lead slip.
This is coupled by two other home draws to Lesotho and South Africa. The former was extremely embarrassing as Lesotho has never qualified for any competitive tournament at all, and Nigeria played on home soil.
Hence, Nigeria are currently fourth, which won’t provide any passage to North America next year, even if they’re just a point behind Rwanda, which currently occupies the play-off place in second.
But the seed for Nigeria’s ongoing woes traces further than this. Corruption is endemic in Nigeria, where every state institution is messed up one after another.
Decades of alternating governments, from democratic to military juntas, made it impossible to have a coherent plan to foster Nigerian football to progress. Even after Nigeria transitioned to democratic governance once more, past traumas still hit hard, and persistent corruption didn’t help either.
The best example of corruption in Nigerian football lies with the richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote. In the past, he was thought to have made numerous attempts for such a bid to buy Premier League club Arsenal.
First reported in early 2020, when Dangote was still being accused of corruption and embezzlement related to the country’s economic transition in the early 1990s.
His bid for Arsenal fuelled immense criticism among Nigerian football discourses, many had accused Dangote of trying to use Arsenal as a cover for his scheme while demanded him to focus on the relatively underdeveloped Nigerian domestic league system.
Dangote’s case isn’t an isolated one in the country’s long and turbulent relations with the beautiful game.
Former Nigerian international Odion Ighalo. (Photo by Erwin Spek/Soccrates/Getty Images)
In 1998, Nigerian footballers openly revolted against the Nigerian Football Association (as the Nigeria Football Federation was then known) in the aftermath of the appointment of Philippe Troussier, leading to Serbian Bora Milutinović being hurriedly hired at the last minute.
In 2002, coach Shuaibu Amodu and two-thirds of the Nigerian team were involved in an indiscipline scandal that saw Amodu sacked before the World Cup.
In 2010, things turned ugly with Amodu again sacked before the World Cup, but this was followed by incidents related to lodgings NFA prepared for the team’s camp, forcing NFA to change base location.
Swedish manager Lars Lagerbäck, who was picked to replace Amodu, alleged that the NFA constantly interfered with his work.
It proved the final straw in Nigeria’s 2010 FIFA World Cup run, one of the country’s worst performances since the 2002 edition, where they also finished dead last with just a point to their name, and even the Swedish tactician decried the desolation inside NFA and opted not to extend any contract at all.
To make it even more shocking, Nigerian football turmoil also infiltrates the youth system. While most people are familiar with age fraud inside African football, one thing that makes the Nigerian football problem further unique is the shocking existence of a pay-to-play system that blends well in a country where corruption rules.
Amidst the ongoing perpetration of the Flying Eagles, aka Nigeria U-20 NT, for the upcoming 2025 U-20 AFCON in Egypt, a shocking revelation was unveiled by freelance journalists of Nigeria’s football channel, EaglesTracker, Ayotunde Ogala and Smith Tayi. They found that in order to be enrolled in the youth system, a Nigerian family must pay over $5,000 for their child to have that dream.
With more than two-thirds of Nigerians living below the poverty line, this incident exposed the extent of corruption inside Nigerian football management. These reports are just the tip of the iceberg, and they say a lot about the state of football in the country.
It’s unsurprising why so many young Nigerians, to achieve their football dream, realise no hope if they stay home; so they move abroad, mostly to Europe, where the football development system is generally more effective and efficient.
Once getting to Europe, some of the finest Nigerian gems often make their preference to European teams over the Super Eagles, a trend that is still happening.
Names like Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, Noni Madueke, Jamal Musiala, Karim Adeyemi, Destiny Udogie, Michael Folorunsho, Caleb Okoli, Patrick Dorgu, etc, symbolise Nigeria’s lost potential, who could have turned Super Eagles into a world superpower in the game.
Still, the 2026 WCQ remains ongoing, and with South Africa, the current team on top of the group table, being investigated by FIFA for fielding an ineligible player in the win against Lesotho, there is a chance for Nigeria to speed up the fight and reclaim the spot with four matches left in September and October.
But until Nigeria finally comes and truly cleans up the messes inside, they will be unlikely to discover their true strength.
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