Nigeria was knocked out of the football World Cup Playoff by a spirited DR Congo team on Sunday, 16th Nov, 2025. They won 4–3 on penalties.
We may even overlook it if it was just a bad day in the office,but sadly it wasn't. After the Gabon victory I wrote this sonewhere–
"The Ndidi part, ah u wud see many Nigerians agreeing with those things[his good performance versus Gabon], drooling over him now. Ah some have even apologised that, they were wrong for calling him old.
Look ehn🤦♂️, look ehn🤦♂️
Why are people so overly emotional analysing football?
I watched Kante yesterday. Kante is old too.
I don't know why people fail to see Ndidi lacks the legs to run that dm pivot position well enough. He has lost the pace of yester years and it shows. That we win or not is not the issue. Look well and see.
Ndidi got promoted back to the EPL with Leicester City 2 seasons back. Where was Ndidi playing? He was always starting, playing as an attacking midfielder throughout that season! Chelsea's Maresca, who was Ndidi's coach then, knew the guy's legs were gone to play the Dm role in top notch fashion so he pushed him higher and that's how Leicester was promoted.
Did u see the tru pass by Ndidi? Ndidi was in an attacking midfield position when he gave that pass to Ejuke to score. That's what Maresca saw then.
I no dey like sentiments. Yes he wasn't bad yesterday, but he had flaws!
Watch Kante and see a player, despite his age, that can still deliver as a top notch Dm. His legs are so full of running! Then his intelligence, wow. Ndidi is mostly intelligence now.
Sorry to say, even the Iwobi sef, Iwobi is not Xhaka or Rice. He has not fully owned that deep-lying midfield role like say, Federick has owned the centre-back or right-back roles..."
Nigeria's coach, Eric Chelle has done brilliantly well with the back-line and carried this team with real passion and like a father managing egos and all. Yet football at the top level is beyond that.
What of your midfield and attack, especially midfield? The frailties I mentioned in the Gabon game are things that have been there even before the Gabon game, if truth be told.
You have two good midfielders(in Yusuf and Onyedika) on the bench and you ignore them, yet the midfield was the problem in that 2nd half versus Congo. Like I said above, it's an old problem, only that Congo was bold enough to expose it further.
What you did is to sub in Tolu, a striker, and then sub him out. It's almost criminal or looks similar to sabotage that you didn't trust the two well able midfielders on the bench. Wow!
The first fault in this failure is the Nigerian Football Federation(NFF) because of how brazenly corrupt they are. For Chelle, if he doesn't understand his errors and fundamentally corrects same, he should go or on second thought, he can stay on since the NFF is not likely to bring in a better coach.
Cheers
