By KATE OBODO

Member of the  Nigeria Football Federation, NFF Technical Committee Christian Chukwu and ex-International  Etim Esin have warned the Super Eagles against complacency ahead of the 2014 World Cup grouping which has  Nigeria  nestled in a seeming easy group.

Nigeria was pitted into Group F of the African competition along side Malawi, and winners of preliminary encounters between Seychelles/Kenya and Djibouti/Namibia.

The duo described the draw  as a wonderful draw and expressed confidence that the Super Eagles will soar above their opponents if they do not  take the competition for granted.

According to Chukwu, “ If you want to be a World Cup champion you have to start from here, winning all games and never underestimate or underrate any team or country, because every country wants to go to the World Cup. So if we underrate them we will be in for it. In all, I think is a good zone but then we should not relent or go home and sleep because these countries will definitely give us a surprise package if we are not well prepared.

Most importantly, we must come out of this zone, so that we do not start calculating at the last minute when we are supposed to celebrate our qualification . I want us to come out of that group before the last match.

“Secondly, I give kudos to the new minister for trying to bring peace to our football. When he came in, he noticed there was problem in the football family and he has started restoring peace in the house by inaugurating committees to look into the problem. The issue is that if there is no peace, we will still have the problem in the qualifying series because the attention will not be there. But once there is peace, I can assure you that we will qualify. Part of the preparation are the friendly matches, the Nations Cup qualifiers that we are  playing, so there is no special preparation.”

Etim on his part said “ We should not underestimate  any country because there no more minnows in  football and it is until 90 minutes before a team or country will become a winner.  Being in    Group F does not count , all that matters now  is the need for us  to get going, by working towards a successful qualification ahead of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and also succeed beyond Nigerian’s expectation at the World Cup.”