The Eagles Didn’t Fly -By Oluwafemi Popoola

There are heartbreaks you prepare for and there are heartbreaks that ambush you in the silence of your hope. Nigeria’s latest World Cup miss belongs to the latter. I sat before my screen on Sunday night with the familiar cocktail of anxiety and optimism that always accompanies the Super Eagles, believing, perhaps foolishly, that this time, the gods of football would carve a path for us. But as the final whistle blew and penalties became our last refuge, the truth settled in my chest like a stone. The Eagles didn’t fly. They didn’t even glide. They simply dropped from the sky.

What makes this failure so painful is not merely the defeat itself but the symbolism wrapped around it. Football is the last emotional sanctuary for millions of Nigerians, a place where governance failures, economic despair, and daily frustrations are briefly suspended. It is the only sphere left where we forget who is Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Tiv, Fulani, Ijaw, or Itsekiri. The green shirt performs miracles that governance has failed to deliver for decades.

We have long mastered the art of swallowing disappointment in every sector, but football, our one dependable escape, was not supposed to betray us. And yet, here we are again, nursing a wound we did nothing to deserve.

The moment DR Congo scored that winning penalty, I felt something inside me deflate. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t shock. It was a grief that words struggle to contain. Nations around the world treat football as a sport; Nigeria treats it as survival. And when survival fails, what is left? The historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote that sports are where nations rehearse dreams they cannot realize elsewhere. For Nigeria, that dream has just been postponed again.

But perhaps the most bitter part of this tragedy is that the crash was avoidable. Anyone who watched our qualifying campaign could see the warning signs blinking like hazard lights. A team without structure. A federation without direction. Players without a unified philosophy. A nation that has been failing its people for decades now failing at the only thing that once brought us joy. It is almost poetic, if poetry could sting this much.

This defeat, then, is not just about missing the 2026 World Cup. It is about confronting a painful truth. A nation that refuses to build itself cannot expect its football team to soar. The Eagles didn’t fly because Nigeria itself has forgotten how to. And as we fold into the larger story of how this failure came to be, one which is laden with mismanagement, nostalgia masquerading as strategy, and a people desperate for hope. We must admit that football, much like the country, doesn’t lie. It simply reveals.

Our decline, however, is not sudden. It is structural and historical. A corrupt system cannot produce excellence either in governance, in the economy, or in sports. For decades, grassroots football has been abandoned. Talented boys in Ajegunle, Aba, Kaduna, Jos, and Makurdi struggle without fields, coaches, facilities, or scouts. Politics determines squad selection. Bribery determines visibility. The true talents, the future Osimhens and Okochas, are playing barefoot on dusty fields while recycled mediocrity makes it to the national team.

“Corruption attacks the foundations of a society’s ability to dream,” Francis Fukuyama once wrote. And that is precisely what has happened to Nigerian football. Our dream has been strangled by decades of mismanagement.

The NFF is long past the point of refurbishment, this is a condemned building. Not ‘tweakable’. Not adjustable. We need to shut it down. Bulldoze it. Start again. If the government genuinely wants progress, they must sack the usual pot-bellied stakeholders who think football administration is an extension of their village meeting. But with the way politics suffocates everything good here, even that tiny spark of hope feels like a joke.

And then there’s Osimhen, poor guy. A Ferrari forced to run with okada fuel. He’s a global talent surrounded by players who can’t match his intensity or vision. It’s the Shevchenko curse revisited. One superstar dragging a team that refuses to wake up. Now his golden years will fade in a country missing two straight World Cups. Tragic doesn’t even cover it.

And now, with Nigeria absent from the biggest stage in world football, many Nigerians are once again choosing new teams. Friends tell me they will support Argentina because of Messi, Portugal because of Ronaldo, England because of its EPL familiarity. But this time, it feels heavier, more painful, more symbolic.

There is something deeply philosophical about how Africans bond with identities abroad. The Caribbean thinker Aimé Césaire once wrote that “the African soul is open, generous, and universal.” It reaches across borders, seeking belonging, consolation, and connection. The way Man Friday reached out to Robinson Crusoe after resistance, after suffering, captures the African instinct to seek hope elsewhere when home becomes unbearable.

Maybe that is why Nigerians cling to European football with religious devotion. Maybe that is why we adore foreign clubs, foreign leagues, foreign stars. Because the continent itself offers too little to believe in. We pant after Europe the way King David panted after God in the Psalms: desperately, breathlessly, hungrily.

Yet even in this global search for hope, I wonder: will Nigeria ever get it right? How long will we remain a nation where talent is punished, passion is ignored, and excellence is smothered? How long will we suffocate dreams, whether in sports, in governance, or in daily life?

I’m not about to stress my emotions over the Super Eagles at the next AFCON. Win or not, how does that wipe away the disgrace of missing the World Cup?

Another World Cup gone, another chunk of national happiness stolen. Maybe this pain is an alarm clock we keep snoozing. Until we repair the engine of governance and stop running on vibes, even our beloved football will keep sinking.