The story of Sunday Mba, Nigeria’s unexpected hero at the 2013 Nations Cup

Jerry Okugbe

8th February 2024 | 1:30 PM

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Football has a knack for producing the unlikely, whether in the form of a modest nation’s fairytale rise or a football club achieving greatness against all odds—like Greece at the 2004 Euros and Leicester City’s sensational Premier League win in 2016. 

Or the event whereby a previously unheralded player rises above expectations in the most improbable fashion, leaving their footprints in the game. 

Eder’s story fits right into the latter category. But three years before his startling ascent from anonymity to hero status in his homeland of Portugal, a story of similar plot unfolded in the southern tip of Africa—the story of Nigeria’s Sunday Mba at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa.

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Under the stewardship of the now-deceased Stephen Keshi, Nigeria had a straightforward march to the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations,  dispatching Rwanda and Liberia in two qualifying rounds en route. Nigeria was then drawn into a tricky Group C alongside reigning champions Zambia, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia.

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