Nigeria captain John Obi Mikel has insisted that his team will have to be at their best in order to overcome Croatia in Saturday night's Group D clash at the 2018 World Cup.

Nigeria will face Croatia this weekend before taking on Iceland and Argentina as they bid to make the knockout round of the competition.

Croatia have the likes of Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic in their squad, and Mikel is under no illusions as to the size of the task facing Nigeria at the Kaliningrad Stadium.

"Croatia are a fantastic team with fantastic players, but we have good players too," Mikel told ESPN. "It's going to be a game of tactics. We have to play our game and make sure we control the game like we always do.

"It's going to be tough, but we know how we play and how we want to play, so we are going to have to continue playing that way."

Nigeria reached the last-16 stage of the 2014 World Cup before losing to France.

Written by
Matt Law