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Editor’s note: This article was completed before John Mikel Obi withdrew from the Super Eagles’ team to the World Cup.

No Nigerian player
has had the privilege of featuring at all three male exclusive FIFA
tournaments – the World Cup, the U-20 World Cup, as well as the U-17
World Cup.

Well, all that is
about to change in the days ahead as three Super Eagles players look
set to join an elite group of players who have featured at these three
tournaments.

They are the team’s
iconic midfielder, John Obi Mikel; versatile forward, Chinedu Obasi;
and upcoming midfielder, Lukman Haruna, who will be the youngest player
in the Nigerian team at the World Cup in South Africa.

For Mikel and his
close buddy, Obasi, their journey to this exclusive club began in 2003
at the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Finland, where the Golden Eaglets failed
to make it past the first round. Two years later, the location shifted
from chilly Scandinavia to windy but clement Holland, where they
impressed, along with the rest of the Flying Eagles, on the way to a
second place finish at the FIFA U-20 World Cup, with Mikel emerging as
the tournament’s second best player behind Argentina’s Lionel Messi.

Haruna’s journey to
football stardom began two years later at the 2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup
in South Korea, where he captained the Golden Eaglets to their third
world title, at the expense of Spain. The Monaco midfielder, along with
the rest of the Nigerian team, couldn’t however, go beyond the second
round at last year’s U-20 World Cup in Egypt. But he will be hoping for
something better in South Africa as he gets set to do what no other
skipper of any of the country’s other victorious Golden Eaglets sides –
1985 captain, Nduka Ugbade and Wilson Oruma of the class of 1993 – were
able to do.

So close for Ugbade

Ugbade, who
featured at the maiden U-17 tournament in China in 1985, as well as two
U-20 tournaments in 1987 and 1989, came close to achieving this feat
before missing out on the 1994 World Cup in the United States, while
the likes of Oruma, Nwankwo Kanu, Celestine Babayaro, Karibe Ojigwe,
Victor Ikpeba, Benedict Akwuegbu, James Obiorah, and Femi Opabunmi
appeared at all the tournaments, except for the U-20 World Cup.

Ugbade’s experience
still leaves a sore taste in the mouth of the former Real Madrid youth
player as he was quite certain of going to the 1994 World Cup; after
all, he had appeared in virtually all of the Super Eagles’ qualifying
matches and even got to play at that year’s African Nations Cup. But he
was dropped by the team’s handler, Clemens Westerhof, and never got to
play at the World Cup with the record he so desperately craved, going
to Russia’s Yuri Nikiforov and Mike Burns of the USA.

Ugbade wonders who among the trio will get to feature in the opening match against Argentina on June 12.

“I am really happy
that after all these years, some players now have the chance to achieve
what I came so close to achieving in 1994,” Ugbade told NEXTSports.

“All I’m waiting for now is to find out who among them will be the first to play in South Africa.”

It is now a race
among the trio to see who would end up becoming the first Nigerian to
complete the World Cup cycle when the Super Eagles file out against
Argentina at Ellis Park in Johannesburg on June 12. Except Lars
Lagerback decides to field all three players against the South
Americans.

They won’t,
however, be the first Africans to reach this historic milestone as that
honour already belongs to the Ghanaian pair of Stephen Appiah and
Michael Essien, following their appearances at the Germany 2006 World
Cup.