World Cup qualifiers: Super Eagles fail to ‘fly’ to Qatar
- World Cup qualifiers: Super Eagles fail to ‘fly’ to Qatar
It was a devastating night for football followers across Nigeria on Tuesday night when Black Stars of Ghana defeated the Super Eagles on away goal rule to qualify for the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Nigeria lost the ticket to book a space in the world mundial after playing out a 1-1 draw with the Ghanian team in the second leg of the qualifiers.
With all cautions yet again, both teams came into the contest with a lot of hopes including two schools of thought making the bunch of the pre-match narratives.
While many held that Eagles, will enjoy the advantage of playing in the presence of their own fans in the 60, 000 capacity Moshood Abiola Stadium, another side of the ‘hemisphere’ believed that much of the pressure would be hanging on the home side even after playing out a goalless draw in the first leg last Friday.
Thomas Partey opened the scoreline in the 11th minute for the visitors when Uzoho failed to pull off his low-level curled shot from the edge of the box.
Eagles reacted swiftly to the scoreline and their dominance will eventually paid off some 11 minutes later when they got a penalty call from the VAR – establishing a foul on Ademola Lookman in the Black Stars’yard.
William Troost Ekong sent the goalie the wrong way to level the score for Super Eagles as the first half would eventually ended a goal apiece.
Victor Osimhen was almost all alone on the cutting edge for the home side -pulling of dangerous charge on the opponent’s defense line while also firing potential shot at goal.
The Napoli goal poacher would ultimately find himself on the scoresheet but had his celebration cut off due to the call of offside made on his position.
A performance that could be adjudged to be a lackluster one for the Eagles, the Ghanian team held to their advantage- grinding outsides approach to realize their dream.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the world cup is coming a few months after the team was ousted from the Cameroon AFCON in the round of 16.
Historically, this is the second world mundial the country will failed to appear since it made its debut in 1994 having missed out in Germany in 2006.
