Super Eagles legend Austin Jay Jay Okocha has opened up on what the team needs to do to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The team has endured a poor start to the qualifying series with just one win out of six matches.
In March, the team just four points from two matches to dent their hopes of qualifying for the competition in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
The Bafana Bafana are leading the group with 13 points from six matches with Nigeria languishing in the fourth position with seven points from the same number of games.
However, Okocha is confident that the team can beat South Africa and the other teams in their remaining matches of the series to qualify for the FIFA mundial.
He said: “If we want to give ourselves any chance of qualifying, we have to be thinking of winning all our remaining matches.
“Of course Bafana Bafana are top in the group, it will be a difficult game to play but of course we still believe that we can go there and win.
“If we want to qualify, those are the games that we need to win. I believe that we can win there, but it’s definitely not going to be easy,” the AFCON 1994 winner said in an interview with iDiski Times.
The Super Eagles have won one, drawn four and lost once in six matches.
Eric Chelle’s team will be in action in the World Cup qualifiers against Rwanda, and South Africa in September.
To stand a chance of qualifying for the tournament, Nigeria must win all their remaining four matches while hoping the other group results favour them.
It would be recalled that the Super Eagles failed to qualify for the 2022 edition of the competition after losing out to arch rivals Ghana in a playoff round.
The first leg ended 0-0 in Accra, Ghana sealed the ticket with a 1-1 draw to qualify through the away goals rule.
The 2026 World Cup will be the first to include 48 teams, expanded from 32. It will be the first World Cup since 2002 to be hosted by more than one nation.
