Nigeria are not just World Cup underdogs. They’re better than that

Michelle Alozie and Esther Okoronkwo first met Randy Waldrum, the head coach of the Nigerian women’s national team, during warm-ups before a match against Jamaica at Houston’s Shell Stadium in 2021.

Alozie, who is Nigerian-American, wasn’t officially on the Super Falcons’ roster, but Waldrum was in a tight spot. The team had been hit with a spate of visa issues that prevented them from traveling to Houston for the summer series hosted by U.S. Soccer. Looking at a list of just 13 players, he scrambled desperately to every contact he could think of, asking if they knew any Nigerian players who might be interested in joining the team for some extremely last-minute games.

One of the people he reached out to was James Clarkson, former coach of the Houston Dash. Alozie and Okoronkwo were both practising with the NWSL team at the time. They accepted Waldum’s invitation and donned the green feather-print kits of the Super Falcons shortly after that.

Two years later, Alozie and Okoronkwo are representing Nigeria at the World Cup. They’re relatively new members of a squad that, despite fumbling their last international competition at the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON), has been steadily building ever since, and appears to have found beautiful cohesion over the course of this tournament. Unbeaten in their group-stage matches, against teams ranked significantly higher than them, they finished second in their group behind Australia, knocking out former Olympic champions Canada and World Cup first-timers Ireland to secure a spot in the tournament’s knockout stage.

FIFA’s rankings place Nigeria as the 40th-best team in the world but that figure is swiftly losing credibility when held up against the cosmopolitan star power of the team’s roster. Collectively, they play for clubs that cover as vast a geographic span as the Nigerian diaspora itself, from Uchenna Kanu (Racing Louisville) to Desire Oparanozie (Wuhan Chegu Jianghan in the Chinese Women’s Super League). Not to mention the clusters in Europe: Asisat Oshoala became the first African woman to win a Champions League title in 2021, with Barcelona, before adding a second last season, and regularly bumps into national teammates Rasheedat Ajibade of Atletico Madrid and Toni Payne of Sevilla.

But let’s not get lost in the respectability politics of glitzy club teams and individual awards. Nigeria can ball, period, and they’ve shown tens of thousands of fans not only what they are capable of, but what they can do against rankings’ odds.

Their performance throughout their first three games has spoken volumes. Nigeria reintroduced themselves by holding Olympic champions and seventh-ranked Canada to a scoreless draw that was punctuated by 22-year-old goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie’s massive penalty save from Christine Sinclair, and was made all the more impressive because of the absences of Ajibade and Halimatu Ayinde in the midfield. (Ajibade and Ayinde were both serving suspensions for red cards they picked up during the WAFCON semi-final against Morocco last summer.) Nnadozie’s save certainly grew her fanbase, but the general chatter about the team didn’t grow by much.

That didn’t happen until they beat tournament co-hosts Australia 3-2 in Sydney. The tightly-contested first half saw the Matildas open the scoring in added time when Emily van Egmond beat defender Ashleigh Plumptre by a half-step to redirect a cross into the far corner. It wasn’t just that Nigeria answered four minutes later when Uchenna Kanu poked the ball through the legs of star Australian defender Steph Catley and into the back of the net. It’s that they scored two more after that: a triple-header off a corner kick that ended with Osinachi Ohale nodding home; then a sublime finish by their talisman, Oshoala, who sniffed out a stray backpass from defender Alanna Kennedy and buried a bouncing ball from a geometry-defying angle.

Nigeria did this in front of a crowd of 49,156 that leaned overwhelmingly in favour of Australia — many of whom would probably admit they weren’t expecting Nigeria to offer that kind of performance.

“I think we’ve shown that we’re a better team than 40th in the world,” Waldrum said. “I think we’re underestimated and underappreciated.”

Waldrum insisted this is not something Nigeria fixates on. But even as the team usurps the minnow narrative along with others including Colombia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, they know what people think of them; they just don’t see themselves that way.

“We never viewed ourselves as underdogs,” midfielder Toni Payne said after the team’s 0-0 draw with Ireland on Monday that sealed their spot in the round of 16. “We knew that it was gonna be a group of death, and we knew it was gonna be a fight til the end.”

Younger players across the diaspora have also taken notice of the team’s success and are filling the talent pipeline. Waldrum said after the Ireland match that where he once had to identify potential Nigerian players, now they come to him.

“I’ve had some under-17 coaches reach out about players they have, a couple of really good under-20 players that are playing in the U.S. that now want to be connected in Nigeria,” he said. “We also have those connections in England. There’s a few players there that I’m already looking at to bring to the Olympics and so forth. I think it’s a huge plus.”

Until then, Nigeria’s current fight continues, likely against European champions England in the knockout stage. Waldrum faced a stiff line of questioning by Nigerian media who’d voiced concerns that he might not have sought out a win over Ireland; doing so would have put them top of Group B. In truth, Ireland put up a respectable fight of their own in a match that flared with mutual aggression and desire. Neither side provided serious tests for the keepers, but Nigeria took the edge in the second half, finding flow in their passes and creating chances.

But ultimately, he and the squad are unfazed.

“Bring on the European champions,” he said. “Why not?”