Obinna Nsofor, Sani Kaita – members of the silver-medal-winning Olympic football team to Beijing – and Christian Obodo impressed in their first starts in the qualifiers in a match that turned out to be the Super Eagles' best in the first round of qualification for both the World Cup and African Cup of Nations in 2010. The performance was marred only by a Joseph Yobo own-goal in the first half. Sierra Leone's faint hope of getting something from the match in Nigeria began to fade as soon as Udinese's midfielder, Obodo (who was making a long-awaited return from injury) scored the opening goal in the twentieth minute.

Eleven minutes later, the visitors equalised thanks to Yobo's intervention, which gave the agile goalkeeper Dele Aiyenugba no chance, just as the bullish defender Danny Shittu was about to clear. Nsofor restored Nigeria's lead from a tight angle inside the penalty box after Kalu Uche's shot came off the upright just nine minutes before the break. The Super-Eagles compounded the woes of the Lone Stars as Lokomotiv Moscow forward Osaze [Peter] Odemwingie scored after receiving a delightful pass from the lively Nsofor. The other Moscow-based player, Chidi Odiah, wrapped up the win for Nigeria with a stupendous left-foot shot after making a good run from his right-back position six minutes after the restart. Nigeria's top scorer, Getafe's Ikechukwu Uche, scored twice more, but they were wrongly ruled out as offside.

*****

Nigeria has an outstanding record of six wins in as many competitive games since Shuaibu Amodu took over the team as head coach after they failed to live up to expectations in the twenty-sixth African Cup of Nations. Consequently, there are few options but to keep faith with Amodu and his coaching team, despite the temptation to introduce Olympic team coach, Samson Siasia, into the national team's set up, or implement the Football Federation's original plan to hire another foreign coach. Several senior players are set to return when the final round of qualifiers begins in March 2009, so Amodu will have some really difficult choices to make. Amodu has brought younger players through who have they have gained much needed experience in the Olympics and in qualifiers. Some of them played in the Cup of Nations as well and many Nigerian players grace the European leagues as well.

After the African Cup of Nations in Ghana few teams feared being drawn against the Super-Eagles, but Amodu and his team of coaches have performed a minor miracle, so other teams on the continent hope to avoid the red-hot Super-Eagles if their form in the first stage of qualification is anything to go by. Nigeria is now more than a match for the likes of la Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and even Egypt.

*****

In the absence of their English-based strikers Mido and Amr Zaki, African Champions Egypt needed at least a point in their final match, but Hassan Shehata left nothing to chance as the Pharaohs destroyed Djibouti 4-0 in Cairo. Emad Moteab, currently attracting attention from English Premier League clubs, the captain Ahmed Hassan and Mohamed Aboutreika were among the scorers, which guaranteed their progress to the next round as winners of Group 12.

Guinea also claimed a spot as group winners after a 3-2 home win over Kenya, while Mozambique surprisingly grabbed the eighth and final best runners-up spot after a strange sequence of results that all went their way in a twenty-four hour period following their 1-0 win in Botswana. “We had no idea that we had made it until we made it back to Maputo,” Mozambique's Dutch coach Mart Nooij told reporters a few hours after their surprise qualification. “It was only when we got home that we found out that we had just made it by goal difference. Now we are out celebrating."

Gambia was the unluckiest to miss out, having secured a better goal difference and points tally than Mozambique, but the suspension of Ethiopia and withdrawal of Eritrea in the first stage of qualification resulted in a rule change that eliminated the results against the fourth placed team in the group, which favoured Mozambique and left Gambia cursing their bad luck, but the biggest upsets of the qualifiers was the failure of 2002 World Cup quarter-finalists Senegal: the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2006 World Cup finalists Angola to progress to the next round. It should not be forgotten that World Cup hosts South Africa would have failed to qualify at all if the tournament was to be held anywhere else and they will not go to Angola for the twenty-seventh African Cup of Nations in 2010.

Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Cameroon all finished unbeaten, but only Nigeria did not drop a single point. Egypt had a stutter or two along the way, but few Africans pay much notice to that – the Pharaohs will still be hard to beat, especially as the second round draw appears to have been kind to them. The twenty teams have been divided into five groups of four and only the bottom placed teams will miss out on the finals of the next African Cup of Nations, but there is no room for error next year as only group winners will make the trip to South Africa to defend the honour of the oldest continent in the world. The second stage, which consists of just twenty teams – Algeria: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda,of Sudan, Togo, Tunisia and Zambia – begins in March 2009. The draw took place on October 22nd in Zurich.

The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon will be the favourites in Group A and rightly so, but they probably have the toughest draw – with Togo, Morocco and Gabon. The Super-Eagles were drawn in Group B with Mozambique, Kenya and Tunisia and would expect the stiffest competition from the north-African Carthage-Eagles – the only African qualifier from the last World Cup with previous experience on the greatest stage of all. Meanwhile, Shehata will be quietly confident that he will lead the mighty Pharaohs to Africa's historic World Cup as Group C pitted Egypt against Rwanda, Algeria and Zambia, but Egypt's master-tactician knows that he cannot steer his charges under African radar any longer. Group D will be interesting as despite being favourites, the Black Stars of Ghana stumbled into the next phase and their top players Michael Essien and Stephen Appiah have been injured and may never be the dominant forces that they were again, but Quincy Owusu-Abeyie has been called up again for the first time since his indiscipline cost him the favour of coach Milovan Rajevac. Ghana faces a difficult task as they must play the conquerors of much-fancied Angola, the Squirrels of Benin, Mali and Sudan. However, Stephen Keshi will be keen to repeat his achievement of qualifying Togo for the last World Cup by doing the same for Mali. The Elephants of la Côte d'Ivoire will expect to qualify for their second consecutive World Cup finals, but Malawi, Burkina Faso and Guinea will have other ideas and the Ivorians will be aware that Malawi not only eliminated the Democratic Republic of Congo, but beat Egypt on route to qualifying for the second stage.

It should be an interesting round of qualifiers, but both FIFA and the Confédération Africaine de Football really must look at the issue of whether the current allocation of places in the World Cup finals is fair on Africa. There are no second chances for African teams and the continent's most successful team has only qualified as Africa's representative once, although they also did so through the World Group in the 1930s. Our best second place teams deserve the chance to at least play-off against other federations and that should have been resolved before Africa's World Cup – the best chance African teams will have to prove what they can do on the greatest stage in world football. Nevertheless, the Super-Eagles are flying high once more and are confident that they won't need a second chance even if one was available.