IKENWA NNABUOGOR tasks Super Eagles to calm millions of nerves by beating Central African Republic today to restore pride and national honour…
The unwelcome record of losing to lowly-ranked Central African Republic in Lagos will trail the once ranked fourth best in the world forever and anything short of victory in Douala later this afternoon will only compound Eagles misery and brutally hurt their flight to Qatar.
The deed has been done as pride and bragging rights were thrown overboard and it will only take coach Gernot Rohr and his wards just 90 minutes at the Japoma Stadium, Douala, Cameroon to right all the wrongs this shameful defeat has inflicted on national pride.
Rohr and company are not only playing for pride, but most importantly the maximum points so that permutators will throw away calculators and save themselves the heart break of missing out on the train to Qatar 2022.
Should Eagles fail to get a result in Douala later this afternoon, it could be on record that CAR prevented the three-time African Champions to attend their seventh World Cup finals.
Cape Verde’s maximum points against Liberia narrowed the “angles” in Group C of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, throwing the group wide open and making the passage to the third and decisive round a lot less predictable.
The road to Qatar is criminally long and any further stuttering could prove disastrous for the national team and the much needed resurgence must begin this afternoon in Douala.
The reverse tie in Lagos was never what Rohr expected especially for a country ranked outside of FIFA’s 120 ranking and worse still CAR were playing their home games away from home.
The Lagos victory for CAR means any home is home for them and this could mean business as usual in Douala.
Today’s Eagles boast some of the best players in world football and so they cannot afford not to be in Qatar and one more defeat could mean kissing Qatar goodbye.
Maximum points will bring back the confidence to lead the charge to hit the road to Qatar, but then the defeat in the Lagos reverse tie has shown they will have to work hard to earn it.
CAR cannot afford to claim two “away” wins over Nigeria and leave the former African Champions worse off in the head-to-head battles between the two countries.
