By Solomon Nwoke

Former Golden Eaglets coach Nduka Ugbade has expressed shock that Super Eagles could not maintain their lead in the 2026 World Cup qualifier, a match they almost won last Tuesday.

He blamed the last minute equalizer by the Warriors of Zimbabwe in their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifier against the Super Eagles at Godswill Akpabio Stadium in Uyo on tactical blunder by the team handler, Coach Eric Sekou Chelle when he substituted Victor Osimhen with another striker instead of a defender.

The draw against Zimbabwe appears to show that Nigeria may have surrendered the initiative to South Africa in the race to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Nigeria and South Africa were the bookmaker’s favourite for the automatic ticket to the Mundial when the draws were conducted last year. However, while the Bafana Bafana have met expectations, Nigeria have wobbled and look out of the race after six round pg games.

The former Super Eagles defender said, “Actually, I never expected such a situation against Zimbabwe because after the first match that they won convincingly and coming back home, we were looking beyond Zimbabwe, because I think that (South Africa) will be the toughest match before the other two or three matches left.

“We did not manage the game very well. We did everything very nicely, then I saw the Nigerian character, that resilience in Osimhen.

“Osimhen has been showing it all his life right from the U-17, Lookman took it, then Wilfred did very well, so also did Ekong till that very last minute the mistake came. Simon Moses did wonderfully well and constantly taking them on.”

The 1985 FIFA/JVC U-17 World Cup winner added that, “Honestly speaking, if anybody told me that Nigeria will concede such a goal at 90th or 91st minute of a game I will doubt it and again the nature of the goal before it was scored gave me a lot of concern,

Ugbade was also surprised that Samuel Chukwueze could not live up to expectation “Samuel Chukwueze wasn’t what I know of him. He learnt a lot from us, Coach Emmanuel Amuneke and myself with Manu Graba as our chief coach in the U-17. All those things are still extremely useful here because it has to do with football science. I am surprised that he has forgotten most of those things. Wilfred Ndidi, Simon Moses and the rest, have not forgotten, these things are extremely useful and they are still factors to decide matches”

He also slammed the coach, Eric Chelle for his tactical blunder in the match; “the changes that the coach made, he did well with the team, but, you don’t remove a treat (Osimhen) to your opponents in an important match to bring in Victor Boniface, not that Boniface is a bad player. But Boniface will not be able to keep those players at bay like Osimhen. We needed a defender to fortify the defence line.

I can’t believe that we weren’t able to manage a game to win it tactically, I was surprised. We should learn to manage a game because our need is not about how many goals that we score, but the three points first.”.