Despite rallying to their first win on Tuesday night against El Salvador at the ongoing Mexico 2018 Amputees Football World Cup, the Nigeria Amputees team lost out of the four best losers to join group leaders to proceed to the round of 16, due to heavy goals difference.
The Nigerians recovered from the effects of their funding difficulties and late arrival to register a 1-0 win over El Salvador in their third group game but their opening 0-6 and 0-3 defeats to Copa America champions, Brazil, and defending world champions, Russia in Group E left them with a huge goals margin of minus eight, disadvantaging in the contention for the best losers slot.
Just when the team has shown signs of recovery, their circumstances was made more difficult by the non appearance of Ghana and discontinuation of Liberia which gave advantage of free three points and three goals to contenders in Groups B and F, to better their goals differences.
Nigeria will however remain to play the classification category for ranking in the World Amputee Football Federation table. They are to face yet unarmed opponent on Thursday.
The “Special Eagles” marked the first appearance in the World Cup after failing to attend three previous editions due to lack of funds. They were on the verge of missing out of the 4th chance with the risk of suspension from the event and other global amputee football activities but for the intervention of The Nigeria Football Federation, The Super Eagles of Nigeria, Mikel Obi and donations by Nigeria following a public appeal.
The intervention however came a little late in the day such that the team was further confronted with issues of flight space, exorbitant tickets and non possession of transit European and United States visas, for which they had to journey through the over 55 hours alternative route of South American countries with the main team arriving just a few hours to their first game on Saturday and filing out the next day against the defending champions
