Onyeka scored. Three minutes gone in Rabat, a Brentford midfielder with the ball in the DR Congo net, and Nigeria were three quarters of the way to a World Cup they had spent two years making hard for themselves. It did not hold. By the time the penalties came they had been pegged back, dragged through extra time, and beaten 4–3 from the spot. No World Cup. Again.
What that leaves, for anyone watching from England, is a strange roll call. Iwobi won’t be there. Bassey won’t. Chukwueze, Aina, Awoniyi, Arokodare, Onyeka himself, none of them. Seven players you have watched in the Premier League this season, spread across Fulham, Forest, Brentford and Wolves, all of them home for the summer while the tournament goes on without them.
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And that is only the English end of it. Osimhen spends June at Galatasaray, Lookman at Atalanta, two forwards who would have started for most teams in this competition. The difference is that over here these are not names you half-recognise from a highlights package. They turn out every weekend, in front of you, for clubs chasing Europe and clubs scrapping to stay up.
How Nigeria’s World Cup ended in Rabat
The campaign was a mess long before the shootout. Players boycotted training over bonuses that had not been paid, and Nigeria still finished behind South Africa in their group, which is how a team with this much forward talent ends up in a four-nation playoff fighting over one ticket.
Gabon went first. Osimhen, who had passed up a chance earlier that he later apologised to the dressing room for, scored twice in extra time to win it 4–1. Three days later came DR Congo, for everything. Onyeka’s goal inside the opening minutes should have steadied them. Meschack Elia levelled before the break and that was that for two hours, nobody else scoring, the night crawling towards penalties the way these ones always seem to. Chancel Mbemba put away the kick that settled it. Afterwards Éric Chelle, the head coach, accused the DR Congo bench of using voodoo during the shootout, which tells you something about the state everyone was in by the end.
Nigeria weren’t at the last World Cup either. Two in a row now.
Fulham’s Nigerian core left waiting
Craven Cottage takes the worst of it. Three of Marco Silva’s players were on the pitch in Rabat when it slipped, which is a lot of one club’s spine to lose on the same night.
Iwobi is the one everyone knows, two seasons of heavy minutes, shuttling between central midfield and the right. Bassey is the one to keep an eye on, a centre-back composed enough that you suspect Fulham will be fielding phone calls about him before long. Chukwueze came in on loan from AC Milan in the summer and is still in the business of convincing people. All three would have been on a plane. Instead they get pre-season.
Forest, Brentford and Wolves feel it too
Up at Forest it is two. Aina has been quietly excellent at right-back all year, one of those full-backs who never makes a headline and rarely makes a mistake. Awoniyi is the other, fit and scoring again after an abdominal injury wiped out most of his last campaign.
Onyeka is the cruel one. He scored. The goal that put Nigeria in front in a World Cup playoff final was his, and then he had to stand near the halfway line and watch a shootout take it back. Brentford have had him since 2021. He earned a better summer than this.
Then Wolves, and Arokodare, who turned up from Genk last year as a 24-year-old with a growing reputation and ends the season with a relegation in one hand and a missed World Cup in the other. Not the year he had in mind.
Ghana go, Nigeria stay home
Here is the part that will sting in Lagos. This was the tournament that opened up for Africa, nine qualifiers, more than ever before, and Nigeria could not climb into that group. Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde and South Africa are all going. So is Ghana, who happen to be in England’s group, which means Kudus, Semenyo and Partey get a World Cup while the Nigerians they line up alongside and against every weekend sit it out. DR Congo, the side that knocked them out, went off to the inter-confederation playoff in March still chasing a tenth African place.
On paper none of this should have happened. Osimhen, Lookman, Iwobi, Bassey, Stanley Nwabali in goal after some big nights for them. That is a squad that reaches a World Cup most years.
It didn’t reach this one, and the harder question is whether it reaches the next. Osimhen and Lookman are not getting any younger, not by much, but enough. The federation is not getting any more reliable. The qualifying starts again from roughly where this one began. For now they watch club football, like the rest of us, the tournament carrying on across the Atlantic without them.
