Former Nigerian midfielder, Garba Lawal says the Super Eagles should be expecting a tough draw in the final playoff of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifier.
Recall that Nigeria qualified for the playoff as group C leader after playing a 1-1 draw against Cape Verde at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.
They join teams such as Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, Mali, Egypt, Cameroon, Tunisia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tunisia that made it through.
However, in an interview with kingfut.com, Lawal stated that the final playoff stages won’t be easy for the senior national team.
“The fans are not satisfied with the current generation, we have a lot of good players that play in Europe, our main goal is to qualify to the World Cup.
“There will be no easy games in the last stage of the World Cup qualifications, small teams have knocked out stronger ones before.”
The Super Eagles’ first World Cup appearance was in the United States in 1994 then qualified for the 1998 edition in France, 2002, 2010, 2014 and 2018 respectively.
The World Cup qualifiers’ third-round draw takes place on December 18.
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COMMENTS
I see at least 3 north African countries qualifying for Qatar 2023 WC. Apart from having an array of super stars playing in top European leagues, this home-away thing will favour them. With Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria in top 5, it simply means these teams will have the benefit of playing the second legs of the final round at home. This is what they are good at: come to your home to frustrate you in the first leg and blast you off in the second with all sorts of antics and intimidations, including their vociferous home fans. Don’t rule out the questionable calls too by the match officials, especially in their home matches. Most of these decisions will go their way.
CAF or FIFA should jettison this qualification format. Strong qualifying groups are enough to produce sound reps. This is too stressful and simply prone to manipulation. Europe uses it only when qualified teams have emerged from the groups.Why is our own so different?
Eliminaton matches should be played to reduce the number of eligible teams to 20. Break these 20 teams into 5 groups of 4 each to select African reps. I just dont understand the rationale behind the current system. I suspect it was designed to favour the North Africans , having discovered many of them have good FIFA ranks which give them an advantage through seeding in the final round.
Bros I don’t believe that, any team that will play very well can knock the other team out. If u watch Burkina Faso vs Algeria u will notice that Algeria almost got eliminated, Burkina Faso played very well that Algeria started defending. Any team that will play very well can beat the big team.
He has a point. It is very difficult to carve out a win away in North Africa. Home teams to them must score lots of goals or forget about the world cup.