Nigerian football legend, Chief Patrick Segun Odegbami has cast a look ahead of Friday’s World Cup qualifier in Kigali, and described it as a ‘very high and unprecedented mountain’ that the Super Eagles must climb.
Sports247 reports that, while reflecting on his days with the national team and other results through the years, the icon fondly known as ‘Mathematical 7’ during his playing days, reasoned that, after failing to get good results at home, it is unusual to seek a revival of fortunes with an away match.
‘Big Sheg,’ who now owns a radio station and runs a sports college among other business ventures after his active days on the football pitch, also warned that defeat in Kigali this Friday would lead to many repercussions for the players, coach, officials, administrators and Nigerian football as a whole.
He stressed, “We are on the precipice, and any failure now will take us a long time to recover. So, these two matches are very important, and I can imagine the sort of pressures that the players are going through.
“I’ve been trying to search in history, where we have been in a position such as this. It has never happened before – when we could not win at home and now we are going away to try and retrieve it.”
The soft-spoken former winger, who was part of Nigeria’s first conquest of the Africa Cup of Nations on home soil in 1980, but never played at the FIFA World Cup, reasoned further that Friday’s match will lead to either major negative or positive effects for the Eagles, depending on the result.
He added, “Our players are on the verge of defeat. However, if on Friday they win the match, it would be one of our biggest victories ever. Nigerians will explode in ecstacy. On the other hand, if we lose, that would be a catastrophe.”
Odegbami, though, concluded with a verdict that he remains always optimistic about victory for the Eagles in any game they play, hence his hope for a favourable outcome from Friday’s cliffhanger match in Kigali.
“I am always optimistic about the Eagles. There’s no match that I’ve ever said they would lose. I always project them as potential victors. Even when they go to the World Cup, I also say they will win it.
“In any case, we must face reality. There’s a mountain to climb. The mountain is high and, for us to climb it, we need a lot of effort. It will take a lot of effort to achieve it, and I pray that we do achieve it,” Odegbami supplicated.
