Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President, Amaju Pinnick, has disclosed why he thinks the Super Eagles and four other African representatives can reach the semi-final of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
No team from the mother continent has ever crossed the last eight.
Senegal, Cameroon and Ghana all came close but failed in recent times.
However, Nigeria’s FA chief believes the plan by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) could see either of Nigeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Senegal break that hoodoo.
Speaking as a guest on CNN with anchor, Alex Thomas, on Monday, Pinnick stated: “CAF is coming up with an initiative whereby every African representative to next year’s World Cup gets support, each representative is getting $500,000 and even buying equipment and supervising and getting the technical department of CAF involved.
“So CAF wants to see an African team in the semi-final, the final or even win the World Cup and I believe we can. For instance, Liverpool cannot do without Salah, Chelsea struggled a bit without Victor Moses. So Africa has come of age and now there are no minnows in football.
“Look at a country like Iceland that topped their World Cup qualifying group and got to the quarter-finals of the European Championship, a country with just 300,000 people. They are largely unknown, but it is the patriotic zeal and that is what we have in Nigeria.”
On the Super Eagles chances, Pinnick boasted that the current crop of players in the team will be around for a long time.
He said: “The players are patriotic, they love the green white green, they want to make the country proud.
“And the beauty about Nigeria is that we don’t just have a team for today, we have a team for tomorrow, we have a team for the next Nations Cup and we have a team for the next World Cup. Our team is peopled by youthfulness, a lot of energy which they want to burn.”
