The Super Eagles need to begin planning now for successful 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign

The recently finished 2022 World Cup in Qatar would have brought about mixed feelings for Nigerians. At least, historically speaking, the greatest footballing spectacle in the world normally sees a party atmosphere descend over the country but with Nigeria absent from the showpiece in the Middle East, it was naturally a bittersweet time for football fans in this part of west Africa.

Needless to say, supporters of the Super Eagles will not want to endure another World Cup without the country taking part which is why the focus must begin to shift to a successful 2026 qualifying campaign.

Naturally, having missed the event in Qatar and given that the country is playing catch up on the international stage, overall expectations have been tempered with no one realistically demanding that Nigeria win the tournament; this is especially the case when you consider that 2022 defeated finalists France are far and away the current favorites to win the 2026 World Cup with the latest football betting odds pricing Les Bleus at 5/1. With that being said, even if winning the World Cup is an unfair expectation after years of treading water, the reality is that qualification for the event that will be jointly hosted by America, Canada and Mexico still has to be the bare minimum for the Super Eagles 

Encouragingly, the positive news is that the national team does have a largely successful history of making it to the World Cup finals over the last three decades.

The Super Eagles know how to soar 

Since the 1994 World Cup in America, Nigeria had only missed one edition of the global tournament which was when the Super Eagles failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Undoubtedly, this was a disappointment but having secured qualification to five World Cups out of six, the country’s record was still a fairly consistent one as the event in Qatar drew nearer. That was, of course, until Ghana broke Nigerian hearts during qualification for the 2022 World Cup which, as already touched on, resulted in a rare absence from the World Cup.

The perils of being lured into a false sense of security 

With this otherwise admirable record in mind, however, it should stand to reason that there’s every chance that Nigeria will bounce back by qualifying for the 2026 World Cup in North America, but that would be a costly assumption to make by the county’s football federation when considering that nothing is guaranteed in terms of successfully reaching football’s most decorated event.

Nigerians only need to look south of the continent to find a jarring example of this given that barring the 2010 showpiece in which they were the hosts and qualified by default, South Africa last qualified for a World Cup in 2002 despite having players that ply their trade in some of Europe’s best leagues.

The longer any World Cup hiatus goes on, the harder it gets to qualify 

The wider point here is that once a country fails to qualify for a World Cup on back-to-back occasions, the task at hand becomes significantly harder owing to how much pressure is then transferred onto the players to bring a halt to an alarming trend.

Ultimately, this is why the Nigerian Football Federation must begin root-and-branch reform of the current qualification process in order to ensure that missing out on the 2022 event in Qatar was a one-off.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel