Though they lost 2 – 0 to France, they gave a good account of themselves.

 It is without any complex that the Super Eagles of Nigeria went into the round of sixteen encounter that pitted her against France. Playing at the Estadio in Brasilia, the Eagles portrayed a more matured style of coordination especially at the midfield where Mikel Obi and Onazi orchestrated up front.

Though they hard a disallowed goal at the 18^th minute for an imaginary off-side position, they kept on pressurizing and thwarting the French moves especially at the 25^th minute when Vincent Enyeama had to stretch out to prevent Paul Pogba from opening scores. The minutes that followed, saw a balance match as both sides tried to slot in juicy passes through the flanks, but were poorly exploited.

At the 39^th minute the French in a well coordinated move by Pogba, came close to scoring but left back defender Debuchy from a very close range shot wide. The missed spurred the Eagles who orchestrated moves at the right flank through Emenike, but goalkeeper Hugo LLoris was steady enough to punch it out.

The second half was not much different from the first as both teams began with a lot of observations. Victor Moses from the right flank set the pace with a banana cross that was cleared by Patrice Evra. From then, both teams went into slumber with a series of fault play at the midfield especially at the 54^th minute when Blaise Matuidi took the first yellow card of the encounter after a rough tackle on Ogenyi Onazi.

The replacement of Onazi at the 58^th minute by Ruben Cabriel, brought more steam with Emenike missing target only by an inch. Sensing some difficulties especially at the attack, Didier Deschamps brought in Antonio Griezmann in place of Giroud.

At the 59^th minute, Benzema who has been absent through out the match orchestrated a man-to-man move before beating goalkeeper Enyeama, thank God centre defense man Kenneth Omeruo fell-back on time to clear the ball before it could cross the goal line. However the French pressure continued with the cross-bar serving the Eagles following a hard shot from Mathieu Debuchy.

A few minutes later it was Benzema with the head that was parried over the cross-bar for corner kick. From the corner, unmarked Paul Pogba opened scores at the 79th minute after a goal mouth tussle. Even the coming in of Uche Nwafor in the place of Victor Moses could not stop the Tri Colours from carrying the day as captain Yobo aggravated score by accidentally pushing the ball into his own net for Nigeria zero France two.