The former President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Amaju Pinnick, has described the Super Eagles’ failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as the lowest moment of his life.
The Black Stars of Ghana got the better of Nigeria, playing 1-1 in Abuja after a goalless draw in Kumasi to book a place in the competition.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Channels Television in Qatar, Pinnick who was still in charge of the NFF when Ghana knocked out Nigeria said he felt very bad about the result.
“Quite at the beginning I felt very humbled, I felt very bad because it’s not just about me or the country, a lot of people were concerned that Nigeria was not there. From the FIFA president to the CAF president, most of my colleagues in the council were asking where are the Super Eagles?
“But of course, you also understand that it is football. It can tilt towards any direction, but trust me that moment in March was my lowest moment since I was born,” Pinnick said.
The FIFA Executive Council member insisted that they did everything humanly, materially, and spiritually to ensure the team qualified for the tournament but it wasn’t to be, unfortunately.
He debunked the notion that he never felt any remorse for the team’s failure to qualify for the World Cup, saying that nobody wanted Nigeria to make it to Qatar more than he did. According to him, regret is not sitting at home and having blood pressure but about taking a self-appraisal to find out where things went wrong.
Pinnick said one of the things he and the NFF leadership did after the World Cup qualifying failure was to re-engineer the youth development programme which ensures that the country’s youth teams qualified for every tournament.
After three weeks of pulsating games in Qatar from 32 teams, Lionel Messi’s Argentina will slug it out with Kylian Mbappe’s France on Sunday to decide which country wins the coveted trophy. France is gunning to retain the trophy they won in Russia in 2018.