{"id":14788,"date":"2025-11-07T13:39:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T11:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/nigeria-goalkeeper-confident-ahead-of-world-cup-play-offs\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:27:14","slug":"nigeria-goalkeeper-confident-ahead-of-world-cup-play-offs","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/nigeria-goalkeeper-confident-ahead-of-world-cup-play-offs\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria goalkeeper confident ahead of World Cup play-offs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nigeria goalkeeper Stanley Nwabali says the Super Eagles are full of confidence as they prepare for the FIFA World Cup qualification play-offs, believing they can still secure a place at next year\u2019s tournament in the Americas.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria, coached by Eric Chelle, narrowly missed out on automatic qualification after being edged by Bafana Bafana in Group C.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They now face Gabon in the semi-finals of the play-offs, while Cameroon take on Democratic Republic of Congo in the other fixture.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The winners will advance to the intercontinental play-offs in March to compete for the remaining two World Cup spots.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In his words, Nwabali said the team sees the play-offs as \u201ca second chance\u201d and believes their recent performances show clear progress.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14789,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-14788","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Super Eagles are full of confidence as they prepare for the FIFA World Cup qualification play-offs","published_date":"2025-11-07 15:29:43","news_description":"Super Eagles are full of confidence as they prepare for the FIFA World Cup qualification play-offs","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19299,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14788\/revisions\/19299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=14788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}