A late Victor Osimhen’s goal earned Nigeria’s Super Eagles a 1-1 draw against Benin Republic, in Group D of the AFCON 2025 qualifiers in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on Thursday, Completesports.com reports.
The Galatasaray striker canceled out Mohamed Tijani’s first half opener for Gernot Rohr’s men which means the Eagles, now on 11 points, will finish as Group winners.
It was Osimhen’s second goal in the qualifiers after also getting on the score sheet in the 3-0 win against Benin on matchday 1 in Uyo
The Cheetahs needed an outright win to seal qualification after Libya had pipped Rwanda 1-0 in Kigali in their earlier kickoff.
Libya’s win saw the Super Eagles qualify even before the game against Benin Republic.
It is now all to play for in the final day of the qualifiers for Benin Republic, Rwanda and Libya as all three teams still stand a chance of qualifying.
For the Eagles their matchday 6 game with Rwanda billed for Monday, November 18 will only serve as a formality for them.
Auxerre defender Gabriel Osho was handed his first cap for the Eagles as he was named in the starting line-up.
In the 7th minute Junior Olaitan sent in a dangerous low cross which evaded everybody inside the box and rolled out for goal kick.
On 15 minutes Osimhen ran on to a pass but Benin goalkeeper got to the ball before him.
Also Read: 2025 AFCONQ: Super Eagles Were Not Combative Against Benin –Ugbade
Benin took the lead on 16 minutes after Mohamed Tijani headed in a cross from a short corner.
Stanley Nwabali was called to action on 20 minutes as he parried away a goal bound shot.
In the 24th minute Bruno Onyemaechi sent in a dangerous cross which the keeper dropped but quickly gathered.
Tosin Aiyegun went close to doubling Benin lead on 27 minutes as he attempted a bicycle kick which went just off the target.
With four minutes left to play in the first half Osimhen had the Eagles’ best chance as he headed Onyemaechi’s delightful cross unfortunately the effort went just off the target.
Coach Austin Eguavoen made two changes with Raphael Onyedika and Moses Simon replacing Kelechi Iheanacho and Gabriel Osho before the start of the second half.
In the 56th minute a poor back pass by a Benin player saw Lookman almost capitalize but the keeper rushed out off his line to clear the danger.
Onyemaechi went close for the Eagles on 61 minutes with a low left foot strike on the edge of the box but his effort went narrowly wide.
Two minutes later Osimhen connected with Ola Aina’s cross but the effort was too weak to trouble the keeper who gathered.
Osimhen had a chance on 74 minutes as he headed a cross from Simon but saw his chance go off target.
Osimhen then made it 1-1 on 81 minutes as he leapt to head home Simon’s cross.
In stoppage time Benin Republic won a corner but the effort was wasted.
By James Agberebi
Got what it Takes?
Predict and Win Millions Now
COMMENTS
“….I will make sure Osimhen does not know peace…..” LMAOoo.
“…Osimhen is indiscipline and must be banned from the National team….” LMAOoo
Contri pipo, place check the nearest mortuary to you if you will find a street dog called monkey post there.
It is usually the first to bark at any piece of news about Osimhen….its quite worrisome it is no where to be found now…..LMAOo
Can we all just agree No Osimhen, No Super Eagles….at least till when the NFF gets us a quality coach….???
Thank God Eguavoen didn’t use his home based Eagles because if his foreign pros can play like this – expecting individual brilliance – with panic attack most times, CHAN 2025 will be….
Expecting NFF to give us a quality coach right now when their song is indigenous or nothing is like squeezing water from a rock.
Anyway, Gusau will be the first NFF official to be in a board that failed to qualify Nigeria for 2 world cup editions because if he sticks with this coach who rewards keepers that stroll into camp with only 2 hours to a match as he is near his “home based” national team aspiration and is too fearful to introduce hungry players that will likely displace his favorite first 11, it is a given that Nigeria will not upstage smoothly ANY OF South Africa, Rwanda, Benin Republic, Lesotho and Zimbabwe ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY DECIDE TO CLOSE SHOP, maybe play for draw.
More catastrophic it will be if Osimhen is injured. After watching the huffs and puffs from Eguavoens first 11 (whether we like it or not, oops, largely the same players that created the WC qualifiers mess), these Eagles ARE NOT CURRENTLY PRIMED to win all 6 matches and they are nearly bottom of the group.
My bad, what was I expecting from a coach on his 4th stint with the national team? No pattern.
If Libya had not lost focus on our home leg, that game would have been drawn and only God knows why they retaliated and forfeited 3 points to us. Their “bad tempered” stadium would have made the puffy football we saw today from Eagles worse.
Anyway, Gusau has history beckoning for him – let him keep saving his father’s money that would have got us a ruthless coach, and stick with his present team.
Meanwhile, both Monkey post and you are jolly good fellows. You guys should calm down oh. Everyone’s opinion still counts
Victor James 1-man bomber Osimhen
38 international matches 23 goals 11 assists.
The stuff of legends…..!!!
Congratulations to Nigeria.
With top spot secured, it’s time to give certain players a chance, especially Okoye. Please rest Nwabali.
Coach Eguavoen’s team didn’t look that great today but no one can take away his accomplishments in this qualifying group. He has qualified Nigeria for the Nations Cup with two matches left, won the group going away and his team remains unbeaten.
He needs to do more, though. Scour Europe for better options and give young players a chance.
Give Ibrahim Buhari of Elsborg Igoh Ogbu of Slavia Prague, Fredrick Benjamin of Brentford a chance.
Both Kelechi Iheanacho and Sadiq Umar appear to be on the decline. It would be great if we can get young George Ilekhena on board. I suggest youngster Kparabo Ariehi be invited next time. I don’t think it is too soon. Tolu Arokhodare and Victor Olatunji should also be invited.
Eguavoen should endeavor to extend invitation to as many players as possible. Those players are Nigerians, too.
Expanding the number of invitations to 25 or 26 wouldn’t hurt, either. Nigeria has a rather large population.
He does not have the balls to effect such changes. That’s a gamble to be taken too far. His “first loves” might readily be outshone and that’s not his objective. Local coaches love the “tried and tested “reliables”” rather than unearth new gems EXCEPT FOR MARKETING PURPOSES.
I clamour for foreign coaches because they have “no love or attachment” for certain players even if they’re not performing because they want to make history with the so-called talents of the super Eagles. So, NFF will find it difficult to pick their teams.
Did you not see what happened at the last AFCON? Even though Osimhen was stifled in attack (which was not always the case though), he was very diligent in the coach’s preferred formation that made Nwabali a star and Nigeria are vice champions.
Nigeria played practically the same way all through these qualifiers, whether they were losing or winning. Rwanda frustrated us away; Libya almost did that here; oh, if Osimhen hadn’t played today, you know the result.
Can we honestly play WC qualifiers like that?
I just have few words to write…
some players need to be allowed to raise their club game and level before any further invitations should be extended to them…
Iheanacho should be allowed to focus on his club career for now. We should play a system that involves 2-attackers, one playing off the other… Ademola lookman, should play behind osimhen just like Gasparini sets his attack in Atalanta… Lookman needs to play as close to goal as possible and not be hinged on the wings. We need a reliable goalscorer other than Osimhen in the role of a 9… my favoured player for number 9 other than Osimhen will be Chuba Akpom… to me any player signed by Ajax Amsterdam must have enough conviction to get such an honour… Iwobi must be replaced… Fisayo Dele Bashiru should be starting ahead of Iwobi… he is a player that can effect a game… Iwobi will always be a musician and lazy just like Iheanacho the jester… we should stop calling players based on longleg… Sadiq Umar has to show more at club before he can be taken seriously… the left wing belongs to Moses Simon and the right wing should have Nathan Tella starting their while Chukwueze comes from the bench… we must inkject new blood in the team. lastly… Osho is not better than Akpoguma in the absence of Ajayi… we missed Ajayi today… I dont trust Calvin Bassey and Troost sometimes, it showed today. The defence was shaky throughout… also lest I forget… Calvin Bassey and Ola Aina should stop acting like kids and pull-up their pants…
@JimmyBalll
Ademola Lookman was at times triple marked in the first half, because of the inability of the RHS with Iheanacho to offer any energy or threat and inability to link up with Aina. The benin defenders were very comfortable to shift their attention to Lookman’s side.
Yes your right Ademola is most effective as a support striker/hybrid winger in Gasperini’s side, but even though I like Onyemaechi, he doesn’t always see Lookman’s off the ball movements and intelligent runs to interlink with him when playing for SE as Lookman does with Bellanova, Deketelere, and Retigui, in Gasperini’s Atalanta formations.
Going forward the 3 starting upfront should be Lookman, Simon and Osimhen, they work well together and offer energy and Simon and Lookman interchange sides effectively to destabilize defences.
The experiment with Iheanacho did not work.
I also thought Ekong looked a little slow and Bassey at times was disjointed in providing cover.
Benin matched up well with their physicality and athleticism and Rohr drilled the Benin team to neutralize space and time for Lookman and Osimhen in the 1st half.
SE improved with introduction of Simon and Onyedika in 2md half providing extra energy and guile
Congratulations super eagles
Victor Osimhen for Super Eagles:
38 games played
23 goals scored
He could become Nigeria’s all-time top scorer with 11 goals more. Definition of legend.
Troost-Ekong still doesn’t have a commanding presence. Even Nwabali seems to have more command than him. Our defence was just all over the place the entire game. A centerback and captain has to command his defenceline better. He has to act as a coach on the pitch.
Nonetheless, aside our defensive disorganisation, I won’t read too much into this game. We already qualified before the game.
A quality coach is the priority at this time for Nigeria.
The absence of tactical input in today’s game was glaring to the point of being comical. Like a boxer going into the ring blindfolded. Under Eguavoen, our star boys are running around the pitch like headless chickens! Granted, the readymade excuse for today’s poor performance was the inadequate training sessions, but that does not validate the awful performance today. Worst SE performance I’ve seen in a while.
We need a proper coach like yesterday!
I want to congratulate anyone who still believes Eguavoen would lead us to 6 wins in our next 6 World Cup qualifiers.
You are the ones motivational speakers refer to when they advice people to DREAM BIG….!!! LMAOoo
If there are anything these AFCON qualifiers has revealed to us, they are
1. Eguavoen has been found out.
Forget that 3-0 win vs Benin in the first game….he caught everyone (including we fans) unawares with the way he set up the team…and special thanks to Osimhen for coming on to deliver that 2nd goal sucker punch at the time Benin had started drilling holes in our defence. Subsequent games have shown how very 1 dimensional the technical director of Nigerian football can be. He complained the reason is because there is usually not enough time for variations during qualifiers. Someone should pls remind him he’s not the first coach to lead us in qualifying series and that by the time the WCQ resumes in March there would still be no time and those will probably be our first set matches in 5 months. Nthe earlier he rolls of his sleeves and stop being tactically lazy, the better. Enough of his “express yourself” nonsense.
2. No Osimhen, No SE.
The stats speak for itself 23 goals and 11 assists in 38 games. I can’t remember any SE no 9 who delivered 11 assists all his career. Of the 5 goals we have scored in these AFCON qualifiers so far, he has scored 2, 2 very crucial goals. The first saved us from the jaws of Benin when they were about to bite and the 2nd saved us from the disgrace of a 2nd consecutive defeat on a neutral ground to this giant-killing Benin Rohr seems to be building. If I were the NFF, I will contract a personal doctor, physio and nutritionist to go live with him at Instabul till the end of the WCQ. That is how crucial he is to our destiny going forward. ALAS, saving money is top priority for Gusau. The more that is saved, the more there is to steal….sorry…to develop football in the country.
3. We Need Rohr’s Help.
Yes, deny it all you want, but we still need that 70yr old mechanic and PE teacher’s help. He has taken 4 points off us out of 9 with Benin….yes Benin republic….who says he can’t take more…? That isn’t even my problem, my problem is how many more can we plead with him to take from our WCQ group rivals on our behalf. If we must qualify for the WC, South Africa must lose the only game they have left that will be played outside south africa. All remaining 5 games are “home games” against neighbours whom they practically feed in every ramification. This Eguavoen CANNOT defeat Broos’ Bafana Bafana…..I repeat….this Eguavoen CANNOT defeat Broos’ Bafana…..in case you didn’t get that….this Eguavoen CANNOT defeat Broos Bafana be it home or away….I can bet my entire pension contribution thus far on that. So while we are hoping we can win 6 games on the bounce, something I can’t tell has ever happened in the history of Nigerian football, we will also need the help of Rohr to Banana-peel some of our opponents by making Stade houphet Boigny in Abidjan the fotress he has made it so far.
As for me, expectations is the mother of disappointment. In order not to be disappointed and heart broken, I had zeroed my mind from seeing the SE at the 2026 world cup since the day finidi was hired as SE coach. I wish other BIG DREAMERS the best of luck. They’ll need plenty of it.
RUBBISH RUBBISH RUBBISH, sore loser. Imagine if the team had lost he would have patented this forum red. Narcissist pray your Benin republic doesn’t lose to Libya. With all your noise, we had expected the 70 year old gaffer to have top the table with games to spare. Unfortunately it’s the BLACK Man, BLACK coach that did it. Go wank yourself to bed.
Hahahaha Okponu aláìnírònú.
So there were even possibilities we could have lost to Benin republic…..LMAOoo
Tell your local coaches to go and try what Rohr is doing with Benin…..let’s see how good they are….LMAOoo
Ordinary PE teacher/Mechanic drew 4 points out of 9 from your local guadiolas with lowly Benin republic….LMAOoo
I guess wanking yourself to sleep is your way of forgetting your life problems….that is why you’ve been recommending it to everyone.
By the way, you have been silent on the embarassing goal your fake enyeama conceeded….LMAOoo. Okoye and Uzoho didn’t do up to that before you opened your rotten teeth to bite them…LMAOoo
I think eagles played the match with the impression that they have already qualifiedb, so they could not raise up the game
And thanks to Libya too for qualifying us for AFCON. They are our MVP of this afcon qualifying series. 3 free points and tripping Rwanda in Kigali (they almost tripped us in uyo too)
As things are turning out, they would have actually had a strong shout to qualify if they had actually focused on football rather than engrossed with exerting vengeance for a trouble they started by themselves.
Now they have to defeat a desperate Benin by 3 unreplied goals (I suppose) to make it through.
Interesting final day ahead.
Eguavoen will break the hearts of Nigerians if he remains the head coach of super eagles. Eguavoen cannot take super eagles beyond where he met the team. He does not have the technical acumen to do this and he is also not an objective coach. His players selection and deployment in recent super eagles matches has shown and further proved that he cannot handle super eagles.
Players like Calvin Bassey ( he is very erratic and error prone), Ndidi (he no longer has the legs to play defensive midfielder role), Alex Iwobi (he has never proved to be a super eagles material without being helped by better and more productive midfielders), and Iheanochor all need to eased out of the team. I don’t know how super eagles want to score in matches if Eguavoen continues to use Ndidi who no longer have the legs to play as defensive midfielder and Alex Iwobi who cannot impact a game either as an attaching midfielder or a holding midfielder.
In crunch time and against well drilled teams, Eguavoen will break the hearts of Nigerians because he will not know what to do in such situations. Just imagine, against Benin today, he switched into panic mood and decided to use Moses Simon, Ademola Lookmon, Victor Oshimen, and Victor Boniface when super eagles were finding it difficult to score. This is very concerning. What happens if he plays against Spain, France, or even Argentina. A good coach would have known that he needed an attacking midfielder like Dele Bashiru, a midfielder who can take the ball drive it forward, find his outfield players like Lookmon and Simon, link up with Oshimen so that they can generate more threat upfront. But this Eguavoen just kept faith with his unidimensional pattern. What kind of a coach does this!
What a dumb comment, so the coach injected strikers into the game that they needed to score and you claim he is confused. It is you that is confused.
Kuro, you see how dumb you are. You say someone makes a dumb comment but your comment is even devoid of any sense. You think packing strikers into a game is what wins you matches. With the four strikers on display against Benin, how many chances were created? if not for the doggedness of Osimhen you think Eguavoen would have had a draw in the match?
Instead of looking critically at the strategy of the coach and how well he was able to deploy players at his disposal you are getting infuriated with someone who pointed out the flaws of Eguavoen – flaws that are obviously perennial with him.
Eguavoen did the same thing against Ghana during the last world cup qualifiers. Against Ghana, as the match wore on and Nigeria needing to score, panic set in and he introduced multiple strikers, including Onuacho, into the match and these multiple strikers kept impeding one another. The end result was that Nigeria could not score a winning goal even with the multiple strikers Eguavoen introduced into the match. Now was that a wise decision by the coach?
A coach had only two midfielders, defensive midfielders for that matter in a match against a team that was playing a minimum of six defenders, 3 midfielders and 1 striker upfront and you think it was prudent of Eguavoen to keep only two midfielders on the pitch and pack the attack with strikers because Nigeria needed to score. Now what did the extra striker – Boniface do in the match? was he not more or less a waste of space in the match? But you think packing the attack with strikers is what wins matches.
My simple plea to Gusua is to get us a competent foreign coach before the world cup qualifiers.
We congratulate Eguavoen for the Afcon qualification. But he simply doesn’t have it. We need better.
Let’s clear this up once and for all: Nigeria didn’t need any “help” from Libya to secure qualification. Going into that 1-1 draw against Benin, the Super Eagles only needed a single point to book their ticket to Morocco, and they got exactly that.
Before that match, Nigeria was already sitting comfortably at the top of the group with 10 points, well-positioned to qualify independently. The draw was all we required to seal the deal. While it’s true that a Libya win against Sierra Leone adds comfort, it certainly wasn’t a deciding factor for Nigeria’s qualification.
So, let’s give credit where it’s due: the Super Eagles had their fate in their own hands, and they delivered when it mattered.
Nigeria owes a lot to Libya. The free 3 points and 3 goals they gave us at their airport really helped our early qualification. That they held us in Uyo for over 80 mins means anything could have happened in the return leg which did not hold.
A lot of you have forgotten that it was raining and play would influence matches negatively against the favourites. Most of you didn’t kick the ball aside street football so you know nothing than poor rubbish commentary as usual. No worries your messiah coach would have made them play differently under the rain, what a clownish forumites!!!
When you read this comment of yours again and again, does it make any sense to you?
So the rain only affects the favourite team? The other team is immune to rain abi?
It’s disheartening to read some comments and wonder how people can go to any length to defend the indefensible.
You that kicked a ball up to world cup level, kindly tell us the impact of the rain on that world class pitch with a state of the art draining system…. LMAOoo
I guess the rain deflected all our shots at goal off target and deflected all Benin’s shots into our net….LMAOoo
Only the “favorites” get affected by rain…LMAOoo
Nigeria owes a lot to Libya. The free 3 points and 3 goals they gave us at their airport really helped our early qualification. That they held us in Uyo for over 80 mins means anything could have happened in the return leg which did not hold.