{"id":15869,"date":"2026-01-10T20:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T20:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/15869\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T20:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T20:36:12","slug":"nigeria-wilfred-ndidi-faces-africa-cup-of-nations-semi-final-ban-as-super-eagles-handed-fresh-injury-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/15869\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria: Wilfred Ndidi faces Africa Cup of Nations semi-final ban as Super Eagles handed fresh injury scare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigeria<\/a> will be without Wilfred Ndidi<\/a> for their Africa Cup of Nations<\/a> semi-final against Morocco<\/a> next week.<\/p>\n

The Super Eagles recorded a fourth straight win at AFCON<\/a> 2025 as they dominated Algeria in Saturday\u2019s quarter-final at the Grand stadium in Marrakesh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Eric Chelle\u2019s side were, somewhat controversially, denied an opening goal in the first half when Calvin Bassey\u2019s effort was cleared off the line,<\/a> while Akor Adams missed a golden opportunity.<\/p>\n

However, Nigeria\u2019s dominance paid off early in the second half when Victor Osimhen headed home Bruno Onyemaechi\u2019s teasing cross to break the deadlock and take his tally of goals at AFCON 2025 to four.<\/p>\n

Osimhen then turned provider for Adams ten minutes later, unselfishly squaring to his strike partner to do the rest after being superbly picked out by Alex Iwobi.<\/p>\n

Victory means Nigeria will move onto Rabat to take on Morocco in the semi-final <\/a>at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

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The one negative from a Super Eagles perspective ahead of the semi-final was the yellow card shown to Ndidi in the 67th minute as he was penalised by referee, Issa Sy for time-wasting.<\/p>\n

With that being the former Leicester midfielder\u2019s second booking in the AFCON knockout phase, he must serve a one-game suspension as a punishment.<\/p>\n

Therefore, Ndidi will be unavailable for selection when Nigeria face Morocco.<\/p>\n

\"Banned:<\/p>\n

Banned: Wilfred Ndidi (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Chelle can turn to Raphael Onyedika as a replacement for Ndidi against the host nation as that was the change the Super Eagles boss made against Algeria when the latter picked up a knock prior to his yellow card.<\/p>\n

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Frank Onyeka and Calvin Bassey were the other two Nigeria players in danger of missing the semi-final if booked against Algeria, but the pair each avoided another yellow card.<\/p>\n

In a further concern, Nigeria will be sweating on the fitness of Bright Osayi-Samuel after the right-back limped off in stoppage time.<\/p>\n

Nigeria were preparing to take off Osimhen but were forced into change after seeing Osayi-Samuel struggling and Igoh Ogbu came on to see out a second clean sheet of the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigeria will be without Wilfred Ndidi for their Africa Cup of Nations semi-final against Morocco next week. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[146,4447,1871,390,10300,10297,548,10298,10299,165,122,129,10296,127,125,10295],"class_list":{"0":"post-15869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"tag-africa-cup-of-nations","9":"tag-akor-adams","10":"tag-alex-iwobi","11":"tag-algeria","12":"tag-bruno-onyemaechi","13":"tag-calvin-bassey","14":"tag-eric-chelle","15":"tag-frank-onyeka","16":"tag-igoh-ogbu","17":"tag-morocco","18":"tag-nigeria","19":"tag-raphael-onyedika","20":"tag-semi-final","21":"tag-super-eagles","22":"tag-victor-osimhen","23":"tag-wilfred-ndidi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}