{"id":214505,"date":"2025-10-15T09:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T09:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/214505\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T09:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T09:34:07","slug":"world-cup-play-offs-how-nigeria-can-still-qualify-for-2026-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/214505\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup play-offs: How Nigeria can still qualify for 2026 tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigeria<\/a> beat Benin 4-0<\/a> on Tuesday to leapfrog their opponents and keep their World Cup<\/a> qualification dreams alive. <\/p>\n

The Super Eagles had star striker Victor Osimhen<\/a> to thank as his hat-trick, added to by Frank Onyeka\u2019s stoppage-time goal, gave them the three points and goal difference they needed to finish as runners-up in a thrilling Group C, which went right down to the wire. <\/p>\n

Benin began the day top of the group, needing to avoid a heavy defeat against Nigeria, but they were thrashed in Uyo.<\/p>\n

Nigeria needed South Africa to drop points against Rwanda in Mbombela to qualify automatically, but the Bafana Bafana ran out 3-0<\/a> victors to jump above Benin and top the group. <\/p>\n

In African qualifying, only the nine group winners qualify directly for next year\u2019s World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, while the four best runners-up qualify for a play-off stage.<\/p>\n

How can Nigeria still qualify for the 2026 World Cup? <\/p>\n

Nigeria were one of the best four runners-up in CAF qualifying, with Onyeka\u2019s late goal seeing them edge out Burkina Faso on goal difference.<\/p>\n

They now move onto the CAF play-off semi-finals, with the two winners of those one-legged ties – taking place on neutral ground in Morocco on November 13 – facing off in a final on November 16 to decide Africa\u2019s sole representative in a further inter-confederation play-off stage in Mexico in March.<\/p>\n

Those semi-final fixtures are determined by FIFA\u2019s world rankings as of the next update on October 23, with the highest-ranked team taking on the lowest, and the second-highest facing the third-highest.<\/p>\n

The inter-confederation play-offs will be conducted in March next year, with six teams from five confederations playing for the final two spots at the World Cup. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigeria beat Benin 4-0 on Tuesday to leapfrog their opponents and keep their World Cup qualification dreams alive.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,5687,561,82,103968,13009],"class_list":{"0":"post-214505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nigeria","11":"tag-soccer","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-victor-osimhen","14":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}