Nigeria road to Russia 2018 World Cup
The Super Eagles are -super- excited to join the 2018 Russia World Cup; the African squad led by Gernot Rohr swept through their continental competition to earn their ticket with one game left on their calendar, thanks to an invigorated and resourceful team of younger players. A recent defeat of their Group D fellow member Argentina has raised the expectations of the fans even higher, but it remains to be seen if they will have what it takes to overcome nearly impossible odds. This will be the 5th appearance of Nigeria at the top global stage. Check Nigeria Betting Odds here.
Little did Nigeria know that, after an embarrassing performance that left them excluded from the African Nations tournament, a visit to Zambia intended to open up their World Cup contest would end up on a very worthy 2-1 victory. Rohr had almost lost his job after the Africa Cup debacle and very few people were willing to put their money on Nigeria, but, a subsequent 4-0 win in September to champion squad Cameroon changed the general mood. A little less than a month later, they took on Zambia again to claim their World Cup ticket with a single goal by Alex Iwobi.
The Eagles also routed Poland 1-0 on a recent friendly match, while succumbing before Serbia a few days later by two goals. Prior to these matches, Nigeria had succeeded to vanquish its future Group D adversary, Argentina, on November 14th. They're still expected to play against the Democratic Republic of Congo and England before they depart for Russia in early June. Nigeria's World Cup run will begin on June 16th with a duel versus Croatia, followed by Iceland on the 22nd and belittled Argentina on the 26th.
Nigeria Key Players
Nigeria's fate will depend strongly on the way the 64-year-old Gernot Rohr arranges his few star pieces on the starting games. A lot of the pressure will surely fall on forwards Kelechi Iheanacho and Alex Iwobi; the goals scored by these two were the main component of Nigeria's classification and their team would suffer greatly on the point count if they were to be injured or missed; similarly important are Chelsea FC midfielder Victor Moses and John Obi Mikel. The defense will rely on newcomer Leon Balogun, as well as on Chidozie Awaziem, Shehu Abdullahi, Stephen Eze and Ola Aina. Sadly, staple goalkeeper Carl Ikeme was recectly diagnosed with a bad case of leukemia, forcing Rohr to replace him with either Vincent Enyeama or Daniel Akpeyi.
The mostly-inexperienced Nigerian team will face its toughest challenge to date in the Russia World Cup, but the capable nature of many of its key elements lead many to believe that, with a little bit of luck, they could get past the group stage. The Super Eagles have been fairly positioned in most World Cup Betting Odds charts, with prices that range between 150 and 250 to 1.
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