A veteran football coach and former youth international, Loveday Omoruyi has served a strong reminder that the Super Eagles will have to start preparing for the Africa Cup of Nations Immediately after their upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, Sports247 reports.
Omoruyi noted that all attention for now is on this month’s matches against Rwanda and Zimbabwe, but the former Julius Berger FC of Lagos battler reasoned that Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) should also start making plans for this year’s AFCON.
The Eagles have already been drawn in the same group with Tunisia, Uganda and Tanzania for the competition scheduled to run from December 21, 2025 to January 18, 2026 in Morocco, and Omoruyi is of a view that the team’s new coach, Eric Chelle should get friendlies against countries with similar playing patterns of his AFCON foes.
Omoruyi stated, “They should get quality games, enough friendlies to play, then you come back and do your homework. You look at the teams in your group, check how they played in their last tournament. Are there any changes, is there any new star player, do they have a new coach, like we now have.”
The outspoken tactician then projected into what he expects from the Eagles during the Maroc 2025 competition and pointed out that they should be able to shock any opponent who wants to rate them on the same strength with their performances at the last AFCON in Cote d’Ivoire, where Nigeria placed second behind the hosts.
“If any team think they saw the best of us in the last AFCON, they will be deceived, and they will be punished. What we are going to do is, now that we have a new coach, let’s see what will happen. Let’s play one or two friendly games, and the new coach will be able to see one or two things in the team. They should just try and get two quality games. That would be enough,” Omoruyi posited
