It will be fatal if Nigeria misses out on qualification to next World Cup - Sunday Oliseh insists

Former Super Eagles coach Sunday Oliseh has stressed that it is important for Nigeria to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

According to him, if the national team fails to qualify for the mundial, it will mean football in the West African country is dead.

“Nigeria football will be all but dead if we failed to qualify for the next World Cup,” Sunday Oliseh shared in an interview after witnessing the exciting 2022 FIFA World Cup.

He continued, “We’re already behind many countries because we didn’t qualify (for Qatar 2022) and we’re farther behind because we didn’t participate at this World Cup.

“Football is a religion in this country, but when you don’t have a solid league, you cannot have a good national team.”

The ex-player who featured at two world cups for Nigeria was given a role to serve on the FIFA Study Group for the 2022 World Cup.

Nigeria failed to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar after losing to Ghana on aggregate in the final playoff round of the African qualifiers for the tournament.