Men will view the status of fellow men making bread & whisper to themselves:
"I need to step my game up, man".
Women will view the snaps of women like Sophia Ogbuefi & whisper to themselves:
"girllllll, I need to raise my standards, gat to stop attracting the broke boys".
If you're a top level footballer who comes from a country that sits well on the global football map, you must be at the World Cup at least once your career. If you don't, you had a failed international career.
George Weah didn't go to the World Cup. He and Liberia pushed Nigeria hard in the 2002 World Cup Qualifiers. It's excusable. Liberia being at the AFCON is no mean feat. The World Cup would have been immense.
What Emmanuel Adebayor did for Togo in 2006 is understated. He would not have been maligned if he missed playing at the World Cup, based on his nationality.
Kvicha Kvaratskhelia has a good excuse not to play at the World Cup. He's Georgian. He played at the Euros and that's even big. Henrikh Mkhitaryan will still have a glorious career even without the World Cup on his shirt. The chances of Armenia playing at the World Cup is slim.
There are footballers from obscure football countries who can be excused. There's only so much they can do. Think of Goran Pandev and North Macedonia, Alexander Hleb and Belarus. They can make peace with the fact that it will take a miracle for their countries to play at the World Cup.
But Nigeria? It should never be acceptable. It should take the players coming together to tell themselves the truth. If they don't make the World Cup ever, they'd retire not having the career they could have had in full.
Victor Osimhen, arguably Nigeria’s best player of the last 20 years, will not be at the World Cup. The next time that competition comes around, he will be just about 32. Ademola Lookman will be about 33. The two best Nigerian footballers of their era have just one more opportunity to play at the greatest football tournament in the world.
And if they don't, it will be inexcusable. They'd have had a failed international career. I don't think they deserve that, but it's in their hands. They should fight the NFF tooth and nail not to make a mockery of what their careers can be.