Inflexion point
If history is anything to go by, missing out on the 2022 World Cup could have far-reaching repercussions for Nigeria's men's national football team at the highest level
You would think such a day would tremble to begin…
—Thomas Harris, ‘Hannibal’
As far as significant dates in Nigerian football go, June 18, 2005, perhaps does not ring the bell that it should. Sure, the more attentive will recognise it offhand, but even then they might not grasp the fuller significance of it.
The setting is Kano. The worst of the sun’s fury is spent, and as Essam Abdel-Fatah puts the whistle to his lips for the final time, for the first time the reality is beginning to dawn: the possibility of Nigeria missing out on the World Cup is all too real.
In truth, it had been dawning for about half an hour at least, since Paulo Figueiredo’s shot squirmed under the outstretched hand of Vincent Enyeama, levelling the score on the day and nudging visiting Angola ahead to the top of Group 4. However, if one had been minded to observe the clouds, this calamitous harvest had been apparent for months, long before the Nigeria Football Association’s (NFA) decision to host the crucial qualifier in the hot, arid Sahel even.
Not that it was a poor choice in itself, of course. Hindsight has painted the decision as unavoidably terminal in the years following, but at the time (and even now, considering it is a method of operation that has retained currency into the present day) it made quite a bit of sense.
Friction between the sports ministry and the Ibrahim Galadima-led NFA was a feature of the entire qualifying series, and the upshot of this was the inability of the Glass House to access funding.
This led to hilarity at various points, most notable of which was the Super Eagles shacking up in – to put it mildly – unbefitting lodgings when they travelled to Luanda in June 2004. Former international Abbey George recalls: “Our due diligence, our organisation, our planning, everything just went downhill. From the start… you can add the travel, the hotel we stayed in [in Angola] was in the middle of a market. The hotel wasn't even like a hotel. It was like a block of flats. It was a residence – kids running up and down, people spreading their clothes, like on a washing line.”
Take this into account, and having the Kano State Government offset the bill for what was essentially a decider was not the worst idea in the world. Besides, as far as the volume and vigour of support goes, there are few more impassioned match venues in the country.
Of course, there is a gulf between theory and practice at the best of times; in Nigeria, that gulf tends to be positively cavernous. So it turned out that a routine clerical error surrounding timing undermined a fundamentally solid idea, ultimately leading to disaster. The failure of the NFA to notify FIFA in good time of its desire to schedule the game for a night-time kick-off meant that, on the day, both teams took to the pitch at the Kofar Mata Stadium in the baking afternoon sun. The rest, to borrow a horribly overused cliche, is history.
It is actually my firm belief that, in reality, it was not the 1-1 draw against Angola that denied Nigeria a place at the 2006 World Cup.
The (at the time) novel use of the head-to-head record as a tiebreaker has gone some way toward cementing this view. However, the case of Cameroon, who beat Cote d’Ivoire both home and away but failed to qualify regardless, should be instructive: similar to Nigeria, it was actually a lack of efficiency against the group’s weaker teams that did them in. The Super Eagles picked up 12 points against the bottom three teams in Group 4; Angola picked up 14.
In any case, the real tragedy was not missing out on the Mundial in Germany in itself. It was in what came after.
You see, missing out on the 2006 World Cup officially marked the end of Nigeria’s footballing heyday. If we pinpoint 1988 as the beginning of that golden period (this was the year before the arrival of a certain Clemens Westerhof), there is a clear difference between the baseline of performance before Germany 2006 and after.
Of the eight Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournaments before that year’s World Cup (Nigeria was absent from the 1996 and 1998 editions for political reasons, so we can safely leave those out of this consideration), the Super Eagles reached the semi-finals at a minimum in all of them. Of the eight editions after, they only made the semi-finals on three occasions, and thrice actually failed to qualify altogether.
Failing to make an appearance in Germany was a dreadful outcome, but its wider effect was the abrading of Nigeria’s standing and competitive level even within the continent.
In the AFCON immediately following, Nigeria posted its worst finish at the tournament since 1982, exiting in the first knockout round. 2010 saw Shaibu Amodu’s side once more contrive to reach a semi-final, but beyond the outcome, the performances actually illustrated Nigeria’s decline aptly: they needed a penalty to defeat Benin in the Group Stage, and in the Round of 16 they were roundly outplayed, outshot and outclassed by a young, Herve Renard-led Zambia side two years removed from their miracle in Libreville. Even against far from elite opposition, Nigeria could now be routinely matched.
Success in 2013 was well earned, but within the context of what came before and after, it was clearly something of a freak and owed (to perhaps a smaller degree than some detractors would have you believe) something to a less-than-stellar field.
Fittingly, there is no better illustration of the before and after than Nigeria’s relationship with the team that arguably took its place at the top table of African football: Ghana.
Nigeria went 15 years without a defeat to Ghana at senior international level between 1992 and 2017, but since the Black Stars’ maiden World Cup appearance in 2006, the tide has perceptibly turned: Ghana have not lost to Nigeria in the 15 years following.
Handily, both sides faced one another in the two AFCONs that bookended the World Cup. (The less said about the chaotic 2007 friendly in Brentford, the better.) In the 2006 edition, the Super Eagles won, the 1-0 scoreline perhaps not a fair reflection of Nigeria’s superiority on the day; in 2008, despite being at a numerical advantage for half an hour following the sending-off of John Mensah, Ghana comfortably held their great rivals at bay and won 2-1.
Come the 2010 edition, the Black Stars did not even need a full-strength squad to eliminate Nigeria, putting a drab Super Eagles side out of their misery in the final four.
However, most pointedly, Ghana would inherit Nigeria’s spot as a reliable, consistent AFCON performer, reaching six consecutive semi-finals between 2008 and 2017.
Of course, the point here is not necessarily to portray the contrast in fortunes, nor is it to suggest that reaching six straight semi-finals is somehow preferably to winning the competition. (I have no doubt Ghana would trade their stability for one more AFCON title win as Nigeria managed in 2013.)
Instead, it is to illustrate a negative trend for Nigeria as a consequence of failing to reach the 2006 World Cup, and perhaps drive it home by referring to a great rival who took the opposite trajectory within the same time period, emboldened and quickened by dining at football’s top table.
The use of Ghana is also apt for these present times, given that it is by the hand of the Black Stars that the Super Eagles were eliminated so crushingly from the 2022 Mundial.
The fall-out is still unfolding, glacially so given Nigeria’s corporate and administrative culture has calcified a lack of responsibility and accountability as absolute pillars. However, beyond mea culpas that may never come, the greater impact may not be immediately obvious.
In much the same way as Nigeria’s standing in the football community took a hit following 2006, the failure to reach Qatar may have undesirable long-term repercussions.
If there is a measure of hope, it comes in the age profile and composition of the current squad. Whereas the 2006 group was a mix between the last vestiges of the glorious late-90s/early 2000s and a group of peak performers, the present national team pool, for the most part, consists of players with their entire careers ahead of them.
Of course, another way to look at it would be to consider this a missed opportunity for this group, and to think of it in terms of a potential era of dominance that may now never materialise. Buoyed by the experience of playing at the 2018 World Cup, Nigeria made short work of qualifying for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations; their participation in Egypt was their first since winning the 2013 edition. The Mundial is often the catalyst for true greatness, and without it, there is a very real danger of standing still and consequently being left behind.
AFCON 2023 will provide the first set of answers in this respect.