FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifiers points table LIVE: CAF standings, Nigeria second in Group C, Salah hat-trick keeps Egypt top of Group A<\/a><\/p>\nNigeria had won all three head-to-head meetings against the southern Africans before Thursday\u2019s draw.<\/p>\n
Former Nigeria international defender Ifeanyi Udeze said he was enraged by the \u201cunacceptable\u201d result.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was our first World Cup qualifier in front of the home fans and we couldn\u2019t beat Lesotho.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a match not against Cameroon or the Ivory Coast or Ghana. This was a loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Analyst David Mikel Okoye blamed the disappointing start by the Eagles squarely on Peseiro.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat the Super Eagles will go nowhere with Jose Peseiro\u2019s absolutely limited tactical nous is no secret,\u201d he said. \u201cThe man does not know how best to utilize this team and he keeps picking the wrong personnel per game with a limiting formation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sports journalist Wale Ajayi said it was a mistake to renew the contract of the Portuguese coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeseiro has to go, he\u2019s a bad coach,\u201d he said. \u201cRenewing his contract was renewing disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peseiro himself blamed bad luck for the draw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am sad of course, disappointed by the result, but my team tried to do the maximum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had 76% of the ball possession against 24%, the opponents only had two chances to score and scored a goal. We had many chances to score. It was bad luck,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Nigeria failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and was knocked out of the last Africa Cup of Nations at the last-16 stage by Tunisia.<\/p>\n
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Nigeria failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and was knocked out of the last Africa Cup of Nations at the last-16 stage by Tunisia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-sport-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}