It was truly a sad ending to our dream of getting to the World Cup yesterday — a very painful one — and I can imagine how it’s going to feel when the tournament comes next year and we won’t even have a ground to stand on. Anyways, we can just get on with our phones and be ready to banter losers. Yes, that’s the beauty of football too.
Did I watch yesterday’s match?
What if I told you that I didn’t watch it? Yeah, it’ll surprise you.
Anyways, I watched the first 30 minutes. The early goal by Frank Onyeka got me really excited and glued to my screen, but immediately DR Congo equalised, I went offline because I couldn’t stand the way my heart was beating. It was better for me to see the scores than to watch the moment another goal entered our net. Honestly, I lay in bed with the intention of checking the scores every 10 minutes on LiveScore, but I slept off in the process.
I woke up a few minutes before 11 p.m. to find the match still in play and it was still 1–1, and by then the last 15 minutes of extra time was rounding off.
I quickly scrolled through Facebook and saw a lot of lamentations about the poor football Nigeria was playing. Well, I thanked God it was still 1–1 and hoped that a penalty shootout would settle it.
Yeah, the game ended 1–1 and it was time for a penalty shootout.
Bassey took the first shot for us and he blew it over. A loss!
DR Congo took their first shot and our goalkeeper tipped it off. Men, hope came alive!
The first five were done and it was a tie, so they began to play extra shots and that was when luck ran away from us and DR Congo won it!
Heartbroken!
Do you know the most annoying part?
There are people who are not into sports but make the loudest noise — being on the good side when it’s a win and on the bad side when there’s a loss — and I’m very sure that 99% of people reading this are like that.
When the match ended around 11 p.m., I was in bed. A neighbour came to the house with all sorts of foul words about the players and the nation at large and, meanwhile, before the match, he was all positive, supporting the team to win. Honestly, I was so pained by such behaviour and I almost replied him, reminding him of how supportive he was before the match, but I felt I might lose my temper even more and he might feel very insulted because the whole idea was going to centre on how shallow his brain is. Am I harsh already? Lol. Please pardon me.
PREDICTION RESULT from this post
No winner!
I’m going to keep my prize and fully prepare for another round of games during the upcoming AFCON 2025 in Morocco this December.
Thanks to everyone who participated.
If you want, I can also polish it for a more storytelling feel or make it more formal.
Photo: MetaAI