Nigeria’s Super Eagles. Photo Credit- The Nation Newspaper
Following a 2 nil defeat of the super eagles by Croatia in Nigeria’s opening game at the World Cup, Africa’s most populous nation needs more than a miracle to get 4 points in their two games in order to qualify for the knockout stage of the World Cup.
The path of the super eagles has been set, to likely follow past occurrences in previous world cup games which they had participated
The odds are now against them as history has shown that the qualification of the super eagle has been largely determined in the first match performance of the World Cup.
In the 1994 world cup games hosted by the USA, Nigeria was placed in the same group as Bulgaria, Argentina and Greece where Nigeria won their first match and went ahead to qualify.
In 1998 world cup hosted by France, Nigeria was paired with Spain, Bulgaria and Paraguay where they also won their first game against Spain and went ahead to qualify from the group stage.
However, this trend changed in the 2002 Korea/Japan world cup.
Nigeria was in the same group as Argentina, Sweden, and England. Where they lost their first game to Argentina and second match to Sweden, preventing them from qualifying to the round of 16
Also, analysing the 2010 world cup hosted by South Africa, Nigeria who was paired again with Argentina, Greece and Korea lost their opening match and ended up also not qualifying for the round of 16 that year.
In 2014, when the super eagles was paired with Iran, Bosnia and Argentina, They drew the first match but ended up qualifying to the next round coming 2nd behind Argentina.
