₦airaland Forum

Vini Jr you beauty!!! Game on!!

Give Chelle credit where it is due! We took these Morrocan guys all the way to penalties on their home turf.

These water breaks are stupid!! Why kill the momentum!!

Morocco is a serious nation. They don't cower in fear when facing giants.

Nomyth:
Football has been effectively split into 4 quarters like American sports with these commercials during water breaks.

The truth of the matter is that those hydration breaks were not done for player well-being. It was all a ruse to satisfy sponsors, especially Americans ones.

Goke7:
For once carragher talk sense

Did Carragher really say this?

Also, Partey was not denied because of missing paperwork but rather because he has charges against him and is set to stand trial. According to Canadian law, you can be deemed inadmissible even without a foreign conviction.

Outstanding showing from the USMNT. Way to kick things off! Take a bow Poch!

If lowly ranked European teams like Bosnia are this good, then Africa should be worried.

If this match is any indication of how lowly ranked teams will perform, then expanding the tournament was a terrible mistake.

We don't need eyesore matches like this.

This Mexican team is very poor

JohnBullMySon:
Goal for mexicana mexicana

Goal for all Africa

Rejoice!!

Viva Mexico Cabrones!!

Viva Mexico Pendejos!!

48 teams and no Nigeria.


We are sinking in every domain as a country.

I pray to Father God that Chelle is given time by the NFF. We need long term evolution and consistency. Let's not lose hope. It's a damn shame we are not at the Mundial but please for the love of God, let's give Eric Sekou a chance.

zicky:
In other news.

Perez has delivered his polling unit

Nigerians are not angry enough.

It is devastating that we will be seated home during this expanded version of the world cup. A generation of talent wasted.

Damn the NFF to bloody hell!!

NasirIbnLaAhad:
I'm not quite sure of what to make of Osimhen's absence from the upcoming friendlies. Chelle's justification was that Osimhen "may have to change clubs." But if we're to go by the actual reporting from Galatasaray itself, the club confirmed three weeks ago that they have made a firm decision to keep Osimhen for the 2026-27 season, closing off any prospect of a summer departure despite reported interest from teams like Madrid and Barca. They also structured a multi-layered commercial financing model to sustain his €21 million annual wage package, sourcing funds from merchandise revenue and sponsorship agreements to name just a few. So as of three weeks ago, Galatasaray's public position was that he's staying, and I guess that was that. And yet somehow a transfer concern urgent enough to pull him from two high-profile international friendlies has materialised?

The way I see it, there's a clear and obvious discrepancy here. The optimistic reading here is that something has shifted dramatically in the last few weeks with top clubs like Barcelona pushing hard (which is possible given the noise around him). The pessimistic reading is that Osimhen simply didn't want to come.

I'm not sure which angle is more credible at the moment, but do I blame people for piling on Osimhen about this? Not really. Let's look at the pattern here.

When we had our decisive World Cup play-off final against DR Congo, Osimhen hobbled off at half-time and we struggled in his absence. We went on to play rubbish and lost on penalties, missing a World Cup for the second successive time. Obviously, not his fault. He was injured. I personally have -- and will always -- attribute that loss to the poor physical condition of the players who refused to train because of NFF's politics and the poor timing of the strike. As for Osimhen, he had already missed 2-3 qualifying games due to injury, when we had become far too reliant on him during that campaign. Then at AFCON 2025, even when he was there, in the round of 16 win over Mozambique, Osimhen was seen in a heated exchange with Lookman after a misunderstanding. He asked to be substituted and was also the first to leave the dressing room when the teams were leaving the stadium.

Now, to his credit, Osimhen responded in the very next game against Algeria with a complete centre-forward performance , scoring, assisting, combining effectively with Lookman, and winning Man of the Match. Any talk of division was firmly put to rest by the unity Nigeria showed on the pitch. That's the complicated thing about him: on his best days, he is the heartbeat of that squad. The quality is not the question. The question is reliability and engagement. It feels like he misses out at the most crucial moments, and I understand the grievance of the Nigerian fans who feel some type of way about this.

Some people here will say, "Well what about Lookman?" And I would respond that there is genuinely nothing to fault with him here. He had a serious season with a club that has been proactive and formal in protecting his workload. He played his heart out at AFCON, and even though he had a poor WC qualifying run, I could see the passion in his play, even though his form was terrible. The NFF arguably had this coming after ignoring Atletico's concerns in March. Lookman is not the story.

For Osimhen, the picture that has built up over the last 18 months is of a player whose relationship with the Super Eagles is increasingly conditional. The injury absences during qualifying -- some genuinely unavoidable -- the AFCON incident, the early dressing room exit, and now a transfer-uncertainty excuse that doesn't fully square with reporting from three weeks ago. I mean, surely it's not hard to see why people are upset. What it says about Osimhen is not that he doesn't care. I personally don't think that's true. We've watched him show up and performs at his best when he does show up. But there's a growing pattern of his club priorities, his commercial situation, his personal circumstances taking precedence over Nigeria duty in a way that goes beyond what even other elite African internationals accept.

Sadio Mané played in a World Cup qualifier days after his father died. Didier Drogba turned up for the Ivory Coast through chaos. Osimhen is a generational Nigerian talent who, at 27 and in his prime, has chosen not to play against Poland and Portugal because of..... a transfer situation that his club publicly says doesn't exist right now?

I mean, come on.

It is just a pair of friendlies. People are looking too much into things. Let's us build a squad that does not hinge on Osimhen, Lookman nor any single player. It'll serve us well in the future.

I pray to God that we retain Chelle. We seriously need long term planning and managing.

zuchyblink:
Oseni Owen is an English division three player

Poorly made graphics

Kudos to whoever is running things at our Athletics federation. Lots of recent successes. Perhaps our track and field Renaissance is here

TheSuperNerd:
Nigeria missed the 2022 WC edition and will miss the 2026 WC edition but somehow no African side has won more World Cup games than the Super Eagles.

Chaaaiiii... Africa my Africa, what have you been doing??

37 days to go - There've been 37 wins by African nations at the FIFA World Cup, with Nigeria winning the most games of those African sides (6). Eagles. #OptaWorldCupCountdown pic.twitter.com/9kTL9ouC9o

— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) May 5, 2026

That may easily be broken this year. We have let a lot of records slip through our hands by not qualifying twice in a row.

This is perhaps the worst decade in Nigerian football and the NFF need to answer for it.

Arteta has been given the lifeline of a century

Haaland already scored one. It will be a long night for Burnley. That Jihadi, haramball tactician in North London must be trembling.

9JAMac10:
Folks praising lookman aggravates my mood. Where was this Lookman form during the World Cup qualifiers. If it weren’t for Victor Osimhen Nigeria would never have made the playoffs let alone the World Cup . Anybody that watched him during the early qualifiers phase could see the lack of chemistry between lookman and Victor boniface. I could care less how a player performs in Europe. Mine is just do well for Nigeria whenever you are called up.

Methinks that the situation at Atalanta was adversely affecting him. Is it a crime to praise one's improvement in form?

Imagine not having the likes of Lookman and Osimhen at the World Cup? Make that two straight world cups in fact!

The NFF should rot in hell-fiery perdition.

Barca ohhhhh

It seems that the NFF is hell bent on destroying women's soccer as well.

elyte89:
If we no fit qualify again,we go host am 😁😁

Hopefully they can build enough world class stadia in 12 years. Building new stadia is hard in Italy as they are all owned by local governments that are plagued by corruption and bureaucracy. Maybe an event of this magnitude will provide the push needed to modernize Italian football infrastructure.

PDPGuy:
Off topic:

Nigerian athletes have secured qualification in the mixed 4x100m, mixed 4x400m, and men’s 4x400m relay events for the 2026 World Relays…

Despite the messy bureaucracy and corruption, our track and field teams have steadily gotten stronger over the past few years.

I am rooting for Turkey to go to the world cup. They have waited so long for this. They have always treated African players well. I wish them the best.

A seagull that collapsed in a lower division Turkish football match was immediately given CPR by the players and was even checked by nearby medical staff. A freaking animal.

Meanwhile in the NPFL, a collapsed player could not even get simple life saving measures. No CPR. Just splashes of water to the face.

This life mehn.