Nigeria forward Ahmed Musa has set his sight on a semi-final spot in the 2018 World Cup tournament in Russia.
The Super Eagles will be participating in the quadrennial showpiece for the sixth time, since their debut appearance in USA 1994 but have never gone past the round of 16 stage of the competition.
And the Leicester City player has stated that the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations champions will aim for the best in Russia despite being pitched against Croatia, Iceland and Argentina in Group D.
“We need to set our sights high. Nigeria want to do more than just get past the group phase. We want to make the quarter-finals and even the semis. Why not?,” Musa told FIFA.com
“It doesn’t matter who we come up against; we’ll be giving it our best shot at the World Cup. We’ll be trying our hardest in every match, no matter the opposition.”
Gernot Rohr’s men enjoyed an unbeaten run of six games in their qualification campaign to Russia and the former CSKA Moscow player revealed how victories in their first two games spurred their determination.
“We’re delighted to be making the trip to Russia. We were in a tough group with Algeria, Cameroon, and Zambia. It wasn’t easy to finish first, but we’re delighted to have reached our objective,” he continued.
“We got off to a good start with a win away to Zambia, and then we beat Algeria at home. That gave us confidence and we pushed on from that to qualify.”
“We thought, to begin with, that it would all come down to the last match against Algeria. We didn’t think we’d have qualified already, bearing in mind the standard of the group.”
After missing the 2015 and 2017 Africa Cup of Nations tournaments, the 25-year-old forward disclosed that the Super Eagles will fight for a place in the 2019 edition in Cameroon.
“When we realised we weren’t going to make it to the Africa Cup of Nations [last year], we decided that we were going to fight for the people of Nigeria. We now need to try and make the 2019 continental finals after missing the last two."
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