Nigeria could spring a surprise at the FIFA World Cup despite being in a difficult group, William Troost-Ekong has said.
The Super Eagles are drawn in Group D of the 2018 FIFA World Cup that gets under way next month, with Argentina, Iceland and Croatia, but Super Eagles defender Troost-Ekong believes they can hold the world spellbound.
“It’s hard because we’ve got a really difficult group but I think we can surprise,” Troost-Ekong told The Guardian of UK.
The Bursaspor of Turkey player draws inspiration from Nigeria’s performance in the last of stage of the World Cup qualifiers where Nigeria did not lose a match out of the total six, except on technical grounds.
Nigeria emerged from the African qualifying group that also featured AFCON champions, Algeria and Zambia unscathed, but were ducked three points after parading an ineligible player against the Desert Foxes in their last match in Algeria.
“We were not the favourites to go through, with Cameroon and Algeria there, but we were unbeaten apart from the last game [awarded 3-0 to Algeria because of an ineligible player],” Troost-Ekong said.
He also underlines the Eagles’ strength as being embedded in the youthfulness of the team being managed by a new coach.
“We have a new coach and a lot of young players coming through, so I think at the World Cup we can do the same,” he added.
On the fear that the Nigerian team could suffer racial abuse in Russia, the much-travelled Ekong said that, that was one issue the players had not sat than to discuss.
However, he said that if eventually anyone of them was subjected to it, they, as a team, would not mind to decide to walk off the pitch if the victim so decides.
“I think if we felt in any way that there was very apparent racism, which everyone would be uncomfortable with, if anyone said: ‘We’re not going to play,’ then the team would make a unanimous decision. We have a great team spirit so if one player said they didn’t want to play, everyone would stick with that.”