FIFA 2026 WORLD CUP: A POSTMORTEM

It’s time to start serious preparations for the next tournament

The Super Eagles is a brand that should not be left in incompetent hands

The 2026 FIFA World Cup has since ended with the Spanish national team winning the trophy for a second time while their women national team are the World Cup defending champions. Meanwhile, Africa had 10 representatives at the tournament, namely Morocco, Egypt, Senegal, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, South Africa, DR Congo, Algeria and Tunisia. Nine of them reached the knockout stages. Cape Verde won the neutrals’ hearts in their tournament debut; Ghana exceeded predictions; Senegal became the first African team to score five goals in a World Cup game while Morocco became the first to reach consecutive quarterfinals, narrowly missing matching their 2022 feat in Qatar.

From these performances, Africa can no longer be regarded as presenting the whipping teams that merely come to the World Cup tournaments every four years to make up the numbers. But for Nigerian football followers, failure of the Super Eagles to qualify for a second consecutive World Cup despite the arrays of stars making waves in European leagues has left more questions than answers.

When the Super Eagles failed to make the cut to the 2022 edition in Qatar, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) promised that such an embarrassment would not happen again. When draws were made for the 2026 edition jointly hosted by US, Mexico and Canada, nobody envisaged that the Super Eagles were going to struggle in a group that had Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Lesotho, Benin Republic and South Africa. At the end, the national team failed. Even when we managed to sneak into the final African playoff, the Super Eagles still blew that window of making up for the failure in the qualifiers.

  The 2026 edition has been won and lost. Now, all serious countries that failed to have decent outings at the Mundial in North America have all returned to the drawing boards to check what went wrong with their preparations and participations. To show the seriousness of these football nations, France (former champions and runners up in the 2026 edition) has sealed a deal to bring on board Zinedine Zidane to take over from Didier Deschamps. Deschamp won the 2018 edition in Russia and finished with silver in 2022 and 2026. That French football federation wasted no time in appointing the former Real Madrid manager as the new Les Bleus Head Coach indicates seriousness. Elsewhere, the German football federation has also appointed former Liverpool boss, Jurgen Klopp as new head coach.

Unfortunately, nobody is looking at how to prevent another scandalous performance from the Super Eagles in World Cup qualifiers that begin by mid next year. Perhaps because authorities at the Glass House in Abuja imagine that the next tournament is far away. They don’t believe that now is the time to start preparations like other serious countries. What is preoccupying the attention of the current NFF board members is their election coming up next month. They are crisscrossing the country to woo members of the NFF General Assembly so that they can remain in office and perhaps, cause Nigerians another heartbreak in the qualifiers for the 2030 World Cup to be jointly hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

 This is perhaps where the Presidency should come in and play a major role in deciding against having the same failed administrators to continue running Nigerian football. This is not the time to hide behind the fear of a FIFA ban in making sure that those who have poorly managed the game in the country are prevented from doing further damage to the sport that brings joy to millions of Nigerians. The Super Eagles is a Nigerian brand that should not be left in the hands of incompetent people to manage. Enough is enough!