This piece was written by Oluwashina Okeleji for The Blizzard Issue 50.

In terms of a confluence of expectation, enthusiasm and pride, 13 June 1998 represents possibly the last great peak of Nigerian football.

The 1990s was a decade of boom for Nigeria: they won a second Africa Cup of Nations and debuted at the World Cup in 1994, then stunned the world by claiming – via thrilling comeback victories over Brazil and Argentina – Africa’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in men’s football in 1996. Despite the political interference of the Sani Abacha administration and the subsequent ban that saw them miss out on consecutive Cups of Nations in 1996 and 1998, that was a golden period of great promise, suggesting that Nigeria would be leading a new era of global relevance for the continent.

It never quite materialised. However, when Sunday Oliseh ran onto Ivan Campo’s headed clearance and blasted a cannonball past Andoni Zubizarreta via the upright, it not only sealed one of the great upsets of that summer’s World Cup, it also made Africa dream. That 3-2 defeat of Spain in 1998 was even more improbable on account of the circumstances that preceded it, the sheer chaos behind the scenes perfectly encapsulating everything that Nigerian football stands for, the moment oftriumph housing within itself the seed of its own destruction.

In what would become something of a tradition in subsequent World Cup editions, the Super Eagles arrived in France with a different coach from the one who led them through qualifying. The Frenchman Philippe Troussier managed South Africa at that tournament, but his work with Nigeria had seen them secure World Cup passage with a game to spare. However, his drill sergeant approach and uncompromising demeanour rubbed both the players and the administrators up the wrong way, and sure enough he was axed.

Not that there was necessarily consensus on who would replace him. The players, mostly drawn from the 1996 Olympics squad, favoured the return of the Dutchman Jo Bonfrère, who had left in acrimonious circumstances following his triumph in the USA. Ultimately it fell to veteran ambulance-chaser Bora Milutinović, himself relieved of his job with Mexico having qualified them for the World Cup, to lead Nigeria.

However, there were several disconnects, chief of which was his entire philosophy of discipline: his permissive approach, which had worked well in his previous jobs (most notably Costa Rica in 1990), was the opposite of what was needed with a wilful, free- spirited Super Eagles squad. “Sometimes we will import ladies from other countries and keep them in different hotels,” the former Inter defender Taribo West admitted years later. “We had a teammate who the other players waited for to bring in his girl first, because he always had fine women. Once we saw the shape and height of his girl, we would call our own boys to go out and negotiate for girls more beautiful than this player’s own. It was more like a competition for women among us then.”

Milutinović’s laissez-faire attitude extended even to the team’s tactical preparation. Before the tournament opener, oddly enough for a manager famed for his rigorous preparation, he eschewed the idea of watching any tape of a Spain side that had come through qualifying without defeat. “The video library cannot help much,” he declared. “It is the players who win the game.”

To boot, there was something of a fissure within the squad itself, caught as it was between two generations: the 1994 pioneers, some of whom were starting to get on, and the class of 1996 who, having conquered the world, felt entitled to lead the team. While there was some overlap, the likes of Rashidi Yekini, Augustine Eguavoen and Peter Rufai made the final 23 despite next to no involvement in qualifying, in some cases – as with Jonathan Akpoborie, who starred in Stuttgart’s run to the Cup-Winners’ Cup final of that year – to the detriment of fitter, more in-form players.

Some of the blame for that, especially in the case of Akpoborie, was directed at certain members of the coaching staff. The assistant Fanny Amun was even forced to publicly distance himself from the decision to drop the striker, such was the weight of suspicion.

There was a lack of squad discipline and harmony, a dearth of tactical preparation, mistrust between players and staff, and a coach with limited knowledge of the squad he had to hand. So of course they went out and beat heavily-fancied Spain in Nantes, twice coming from behind in a topsy-turvy encounter that saw the Super Eagles force La Roja to play on their terms. “Nigeria play to play, and do so without thinking. The importance of the result, the variations of the score, do not affect their game,” Marcelo Bielsa wrote in his World Cup column for El País. “They can play well simultaneously with the opponent. On the other hand, Spain, in order to play well, first need to cause the opponent to play badly.”

In spells, Nigeria were electric, threatening the Spanish backline with the pace of Victor Ikpeba and the dribbling of Jay-Jay Okocha all over the pitch. When they were not, erratic finishing – chiefly from Raúl – let them off the hook, particularly in a frenzied opening 15 minutes during which Spain could have put the game to bed. Typically, they were punished for their profligacy. “Spain believed that we were physically troubled and they were wrong,” the winger Finidi George said afterward. “They pushed a lot in the first minutes and then they paid for it.”

The result seemed to confirm Nigeria’s place as a rising footballing power, but by the same token it served to calcify the myth of Nigerian resilience, the idea that proper preparation did not matter. When the bulk of that side triumphed in the Olympics two years prior, they had done so within a similarly disorderly atmosphere, with owed bonuses, managerial uncertainty and shabby-to- non-existent logistics the order of the day. The sense became then that the more shambolic the organisation, the more Nigerian footballers rose to the occasion.

Despite the surprise round of 16 thrashing at the hands of Denmark as evidence to the contrary, that notion has continued to hold sway in the country’s football into the present day. The same foibles that plagued that team persist, the product of administrative incompetence buttressed by corruption and capacity deficits.

No one actually knows how many people there are in Nigeria. Guesstimates range from 150 to 250 million, but there has been no official national census since 2006. Everyone agrees on two things, though: Nigeria boasts the largest population on the continent, and its senior men’s national team – the Super Eagles – should have more than three Africa Cup of Nations victories to its name.

Nigeria, then, is the great underachiever of the continent, certainly relative to resources and interest. However, on that afternoon at Stade de la Beaujoire, the world caught a glimpse of its immense potential for perhaps the final time.

Oluwashina Okeleji briefly flirted with the dream of becoming a lawyer, before developing his insatiable appetite for sport news. The face and voice of BBC Sport from Nigeria on radio, television and online since 2004, and has established himself as one of Africa’s most respected broadcasters. He is a contributor for World Soccer and Al-Jazeera Sport. @Oluwashina