Preview of the changing world: Nigeria is getting better and better, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is giving big prizes for promotion

6686 Sports News on November 16th. At 3:00 on November 17th, Beijing time, Nigeria faced the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the World African Preliminary Finals. This competition will also determine which team can represent Africa in the World Cup play-offs.

In the world-preliminary competition, in the first stage of the competition, the nine first-placed teams qualified directly for the World Cup; in the second stage, the four best-performing second-placed teams (excluding the head-to-head record of the bottom team in the same group) started fighting to compete for a place to represent the African region in the play-offs.

In the first stage of the competition, Nigeria ranked second with 17 points with 4 wins, 5 draws and 1 loss. After excluding Zimbabwe, which was last in the same group, it scored 15 points, ranking second and fourth among all groups, and thus qualified for the second stage. In the subsequent African semi-finals, Nigeria defeated Gabon 4-1 in the playoff and qualified for the World African Preliminary Finals. Osimhen scored a double in the overtime and became an important contributor to helping the team advance.

Nigeria has entered the World Cup finals six times and has been shortlisted for the top 16 three times. It is a well-deserved traditional strong team in African football. However, the Nigerian team failed to qualify for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

In the first stage of the competition, the Democratic Republic of the Congo ranked second with 22 points with 7 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses. After excluding South Sudan, which was last in the same group, it scored 16 points, ranking second in all groups, and thus entered the second stage. In the African semi-finals, the Democratic Republic of the Congo defeated Cameroon 1-0 and qualified for the World African Preliminary Finals.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo only qualified for the 1974 World Cup in Germany. In that tournament, the team lost all three games and announced that it would return home in the group stage. Since then, the team has been away from the World Cup for a long time. In this World Cup, the Democratic Republic of the Congo performed well, and the team finally saw the hope of entering the World Cup for the second time in team history. President Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo also issued a huge bonus. If they can defeat Nigeria and qualify for the World Cup play-offs, each player will receive a huge bonus of US$1 million.

In previous encounters between the two sides, Nigeria was evenly matched with its opponents with 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss.