{"id":18057,"date":"2025-09-05T09:22:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/?p=18057"},"modified":"2025-09-05T09:22:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:22:32","slug":"nigeria-staring-elimination-in-the-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/05\/nigeria-staring-elimination-in-the-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria staring elimination in the face&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\">There&#8217;s no African heavyweight in greater peril, with only four matches still to play, than Nigeria, who are six points off group leaders&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/africa.espn.com\/football\/team?id=467\">South Africa<\/a>&nbsp;heading into the international break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The Super Eagles need maximum points from their outstanding matches &#8211; including against Bafana Bafana in Bloemfontein on September 9 &#8211; to stand a chance of progression, although the CAF playoffs and the inter-continental playoffs might represent a more realistic route to the competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Before the Bafana game, Nigeria host Rwanda on Saturday, with the Amavubi &#8212; currently on eight points &#8212; representing a veritable banana skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The West African giants will be harbouring hope that South Africa&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/africa.espn.com\/espn\/story\/_\/id\/46144448\/south-africa-bafana-bafana-need-vital-win-lesotho-teboho-mokoena-punishment-looms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">will be punished<\/a>&nbsp;by FIFA for playing the ineligible&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/espn.com\/soccer\/player\/_\/id\/256691\/teboho-mokoena\">Teboho Mokoena<\/a>&nbsp;in their March victory over Lesotho. If that result is overturned and Bafana punished, then Nigeria may start fancying their chances of an unlikely escape act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Under-pressure Eric Chelle can call upon&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/espn.com\/soccer\/player\/_\/id\/228296\/victor-osimhen\">Victor Osimhen<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/espn.com\/soccer\/player\/_\/id\/175063\/alex-iwobi\">Alex Iwobi<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/espn.com\/soccer\/player\/_\/id\/229645\/ademola-lookman\">Ademola Lookman<\/a>&nbsp;and many others as he looks to improve dramatically on Nigeria&#8217;s recent performances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s no African heavyweight in greater peril, with only four matches still to play, than Nigeria, who are six points off group leaders&nbsp;South Africa&nbsp;heading into the international break. The Super Eagles need maximum points from their outstanding matches &#8211; including against Bafana Bafana in Bloemfontein on September 9 &#8211; to stand a chance of progression, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","category-naija-news","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Nigeria-football-players-1.jpg?fit=1278%2C718&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18060,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18057\/revisions\/18060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}