The Nigerian national team are 60th in FIFA's world rankings and are managed by Stephen Keshi, who has been in charge since November 2011.
Nigeria played their first official game in October 1949 and achieved relative success by finishing third in the Africa Cup of Nations in both 1976 and 1978.
The Super Eagles finally won the competition for the first time in 1980 but had to wait another 14 years before lifting the trophy again. They have missed out in the final on four separate occasions and did not qualify for the 2012 tournament.
Nigeria qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 1994 and reached the last 16, only to be knocked out by Italy after a dramatic match in Foxborough.
Four years later a Super Eagles team containing former Arsenal striker Kanu qualified for France '98 and once again made it through the group stage. However, they were beaten in the second round by Denmark.
The Nigerian squads that competed at the 2002 and 2010 World Cups did not make it out of their respective groups.
Copyright 2013 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source 27 Jun 2012
