A former Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President Amaju Pinnick has pointed to the Super Eagles’ successful 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign as the standard for the team’s resilience, while expressing dismay over the recent failure to reach the 2022 tournament.
Speaking on Sunday Oliseh’s Global Football Insights show, Pinnick, who led the NFF from 2014 to 2022, revisited the challenging 2018 qualifying group.
“In 2018, we had the toughest group ever; we had all the AFCON winners,” the former CAF vice president stated. “Algeria hadn’t lost in over 20 games, Cameroon were defending champions, Zambia were champions, and Nigeria was the least considered.”
He recallee the scale of that achievement, noting, “We qualified with two games to spare, and we didn’t sleep.” This historic success guided Nigeria to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, a highlight of his tenure.
However, Pinnick, who also presided over the playoff defeat to Ghana that saw Nigeria miss the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, expressed profound shock at the recent qualifying setback. He highlighted that the failure was particularly surprising given the expanded format for the upcoming 2026 tournament.
