{"id":29537,"date":"2024-04-29T14:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/world-cup-qualifiers-it-wont-be-easy-adepoju-predicts-nigeria-vs-south-africa\/"},"modified":"2024-04-29T14:00:24","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T14:00:24","slug":"world-cup-qualifiers-it-wont-be-easy-adepoju-predicts-nigeria-vs-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/world-cup-qualifiers-it-wont-be-easy-adepoju-predicts-nigeria-vs-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup qualifiers: It won\u2019t be easy \u2013 Adepoju predicts Nigeria vs South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Former Nigeria international, Mutiu Adepoju has predicted the outcome of the Super Eagles\u2019 2026 World Cup qualifying match against South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, the game between the Bafana Bafana and the Super Eagles will be difficult.<\/p>\n<p>The Super Eagles exceeded expectations of many Nigerians by reaching the final of the competition in Ivory Coast following their very poor form before the competition.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria beat Bafana Bafana and dumped them out of the competition after a nerve-wrecking penalty shootout in the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>The South Africans will be expected in Uyo for the all important game and Adepoju pointed out that the rivalry between both nations is now at the same level as Nigeria versus Ghana or Cameroon.<\/p>\n<p>Heading to match day 3, the Group C of the qualifying series is tight, with only two points separating the first placed team Rwanda and fifth placed Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSouth Africa is not going to be easy, we defeated them in the semifinals of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations and our women defeated them in the Olympic qualifiers,\u201d Adepoju said to Hot Sports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s always very tough playing against South Africa, just like playing against Cameroon in the past and even Ghana.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s another big opposition. Benin Republic and any team are motivated to play against us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we have to do is try and break them so all the support should be given to the coaches. The players should have that belief that the whole country is behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>World Cup qualifiers: It won\u2019t be easy \u2013 Adepoju predicts Nigeria vs South Africa<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Nigeria international, Mutiu Adepoju has predicted the outcome of the Super Eagles\u2019 2026 World Cup qualifying match against South&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12569,15,10188,160,14589],"tags":[6649,140,3579,180,18,3582,1734,201,3578],"class_list":["post-29537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adepoju","category-news","category-nigeria-vs-south-africa","category-sport","category-world-cup-qualifiers","tag-adepoju","tag-africa","tag-cup","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-qualifiers","tag-south","tag-sport","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}