Former Super Eagles goalkeeper, David Aigbovo, says it will require a ‘great miracle’ for the Super Eagles to book their passage to the 2026 World Cup to be co-hosted by USA, Canada and Mexico.
The Super Eagles currently sit in fifth position in Group C, with only three points from four matches and trailing Rwanda, South Africa, and Benin, each with seven points. Nigeria will resume their World Cup qualifying campaign on March 17 with a clash against table-topper Rwanda in Kigali before hosting Zimbabwe.
Aigbovo, who led IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan to win the maiden CAF Cup title in 1991, is of the opinion that the Super Eagles burgled their chances of qualifying for the 2026 FIFA World Cup long ago.
“No serious country wishing to make the party to the 2026 World Cup will pick three draws in three matches,” Aigbovo told The Guardian yesterday. “For me, what the NFF is doing now by appointing a Malian coach for the Super Eagles is medicine after death. The Eagles have messed up the chances since last year, and we should accept it.”
According to the former Bendel Insurance FC goalkeeper, it will take a miracle for the newly appointed ex-Malian player, Eric Sekou Chelle, to deliver the World Cup ticket.
“In the first place, I don’t know the rationale behind NFF’s decision to settle for a Malian for the Super Eagles job. I know that the former Interim coach, Augustine Eguavoen, won’t be able to measure up. A lot of people actually wanted Eguavoen to be removed and I saw that coming long ago. But to bring in a Malian to coach the Super Eagles is what I don’t understand. I just hope it is not going to be a waste of time and resources because I don’t see him getting the World Cup ticket for Nigeria,” he said.
Aigbovo, who spoke from Warri, Delta State, revealed that the NFF “planted the seed of failure” for the Super Eagles soon after their victory at South Africa 2013 AFCON.
“The NFF destroyed the foundation of our football long ago, and it is one major problem, which I think will continue to work against the Super Eagles. In the days of late Stephen Keshi, he laid a solid foundation by building the team around home-based players. Keshi never relied on foreign-based players.”
What he did then was to assemble players from the local league and train with them while waiting for a few foreign-based players to join his camp. However, former NFF President Amaju Pinnick worked against it because he did not like Keshi.
“We couldn’t qualify to defend our AFCON title in 2015, and we did not qualify for the 2017 edition.
Now, what we have is a late assemblage of players from Europe, which does not give team handlers a chance to build a team. The Super Eagles of today are dominated by players who display their individual skills, which is why Nigeria is finding it difficult to beat many African countries. It is the simple truth. I don’t know what the new Malian coach, Chelle, will do to change it,” Aigbovo stated.
