Nigeria 1:0 Rwanda - Retrospective Review

Super Eagles kept their hope of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup alive after overcoming ‘stubborn’ Rwanda 1-0 at the Godswill Akpabio Stadium, Uyo, on Saturday following a freakish goal by Tolu Arokodare.

Never a classic by a country mile but maximum 3 points in the bag will elicit zero complaints from me.

I loved the feeling of watching this match . It had nothing to do with the match itself, more of my expectations being as low as water from borehole.

Low expectations aside, Chelle has now manufactured 7 points out of 9 from 3 qualifiers; this is astounding! Kudos to him, his coaching crew and the players.

It reminds me of watching a Jose Morinho tutored side back in his heydays at Chelsea when they would grind out narrow wins after playing badly, accumulating enough points this way to win the English Premier League trophy.

But for an unfortunate catalogue of errors in the dying embers of the last match leading to the 1:1 draw against Zimbabwe, we would have been talking about 12 points now.

Anyway, Arokodare is proving to be quite impactful. His hold-up play is of the elite spectrum and his goal today saved our bacon.

Iwobi, I thought, had a decent game. He produced some neat passes and put himself around.

I think it is not worth it talking about the players individually because, apart from Arokodare, most of them looked flat, off pace and off colour.

But, as a team, I felt their structure was solid and sound enough to subdue the immediate opponent enough to hit the ultimate target by extracting maximum 3 points, keeping our hopes alive.

Today, I think it was the ultimate case of the whole being greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

I think these players will be more energetic in the next match with this victory and the game itself helping to warm them up.

They will have to be; they will have to put their foot on the gas to get something out of the match against South Africa. This sort of tepid individual performances will get them in hotter waters.