Irrespective of the results of their international friendly match against Brazil's national football team on Sunday, the Super Eagles will be good enough to make the latter stages of the next World Cup, says Wilfred Ndidi.
Leicester City's midfielder Wilfred Ndidi has revealed that if coach Gernot Rohr's side can continue to grow together, believe more in themselves and play as a team, they can make a significant impact at the World Cup.
Nigeria has never made it past the second round of the World Cup, with Cameroon (1990), Senegal (2002), and Ghana (2010) being the only African countries to have reached the quarter final stage of the global event.
However, Ndidi is confident that the current bunch of Super Eagles players have something special that can be harnessed to surpass the feats of their predecessors.
“With the right mindset and belief in our qualities, and playing together as a team and not just individuals, we can make every game count and get the wins to go as far as possible,” said the 22-year-old midfield enforcer as observed by Soccernet.ng.
“We have closed the gap and we are still growing. As we grow, experience comes.
“We beat Argentina before the World Cup and during the World Cup we lost 2-1 to a late goal. But that is where we get the growth and experience.
“You can see we are trying to play a young team at the World Cup, and at the African Cup of Nations where we reached the semi-finals and lost to champions Algeria.
“We are young, mobile, and we can play good football. Everything comes with time, we are trying our best and we are getting there.”
However, the Super Eagles German tactician, Gernot Rohr believes more has to be done off the pitch for Nigeria to compete with the best for the world's most prestigious footballing honour.
The 66-year-old, who has been in charge of the Nigeria national team since 2016, is of the opinion that improvements in terms of organisation and discipline must come first before success on the field can follow.
“There is still a lot of work to do. It is always the same problems – waiting days for our equipment to arrive, visa issues – we have to do better.
“We need to do better work with the young players, who need to have more discipline.
“We have African players doing well in Europe, some like our stand-in captain William Troost-Ekong are born in Europe and bring back good philosophy and culture which others can learn.”
