Super Eagles Turn Attention On World Cup Final Qualifier Against Ghana

All players in Nigeria’s national team, Super Eagles have turned their attention on the final qualification fixtures for the 2022 World Cup, for which they will tango Ghana’s Black Stars in March.

Megasportsarena.com reports that, though still fresh from their shock ouster from the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon, the next focus now is on how to overcome the Ghanaians and soar to Qatar 2022.

This much has been revealed by captain of the team, Ahmed Musa, who told thenff.com that, although the Eagles’ exit from the 33rd AFCON was a huge disappointment for the players, the shock has made them stronger.

He assured that they will use all lessons learnt to do better in their upcoming challenges, starting with the home and away World Cup play-off, of which the Ghanaians will host the first leg on March 24th and the reverse fixture will be in Nigeria on 29th March.

Those matches will reignite memories of the previous 57 encounters between both teams, in over 71 years of an intense football rivalry of the two Anglophone West African countries; of which Nigeria have won 16, 18 drawn and Ghana took 23.

Both countries have also been involved in previous World Cup qualifying fixtures, as they clashed for the 1962, 1970, 1974 and 2002 finals, with honours evenly shared.

Ghana edged the contention for the 1962 World Cup ticket with a 4-1 win in Accra and 2-2 draw in Lagos, while the race for Mexico 1970 saw Nigeria win 2-1 in Lagos with the return leg ending 1-1 in Accra.

For the 1974 in Germany, Ghana were awarded a 2-0 win for the first leg that was abandoned in Lagos, with both teams ending it 0-0 in Accra in the return, while the race for Korea/Japan 2002 saw a 0-0 draw in Accra and the Eagles won the return 3-0 in Port Harcourt.

The stage is now set for a rehash of that rivalry, with both dates in March now looming large and Musa, while licking wounds of his side’s AFCON 2021 nightmare, stressed that everyone has not turned total focus of the task of making it to Qatar 2022.

Musa added: “You know it is still a shock but I can assure you that things like these make a team stronger. We did our best in the circumstances.

“When you lose at a tournament, it hurts really bad. However, we don’t have time to keep reflecting over what went wrong.

“We have very important challenges in front of us, and all we can do is stay stronger and have firm belief in ourselves that we can do it. The focus is now on the World Cup play-off.”