BY OUR REPORTER
Nigeria’s 1-1 draw with the Blue Sharks of Cape Verde merely postponed the doomsday for Coach Gernot Rohr. The incompetence of the Franco-German gaffer is well known, but the Nigeria Football Federation chose to keep him.
Rohr spends his tenure as Nigeria manager living abroad. He prefers to monitor our professionals who are already established in various clubs abroad, rather than look inwards for raw talents and develop them, like all previous coaches did.
Coaches rely on local talents sourced from their local leagues, as the fulcrum of their national sides, and then bring in talents from abroad into the group. That’s the norm worldwide. But Rohr does the opposite. That’s why he’s unable to mount a formidable campaign. We’ve only managed to scrap through in most of our recent matches either in the African Cup qualifies, or the Qatar World cup qualifiers.
Pundits complain about Rohr’s lack of tactics. The Super Eagles have no specific style of playing. Even opposing coaches find it difficult to read our game, so they take us as we come. We don’t stick to any formation or playing pattern. This coach has no ideas; no game plan or match-winning strategies. The draw with Cape Verde came down to the brilliance of Victor Osimhen and his determined team-mates. That’s not how we would qualify for the World Cup.
Even if we qualify by chance, how are we going to perform against the world’s bests? The game has advanced dramatically. Nowadays, coaches get fired even after winning a league. It’s now very rare to see a coach hold down a job for three years, unless he is winning all the major silverwares and winning well.
Nigeria’s indigeneous coaches like the late Shuabu Amodu, Stephen Keshi, Sunday Oliseh, and Augustine Eguaveon, are far better than Rohr; yet they all lost their jobs. What’s keeping Rohr there when he’s not performing?
We should recruit a competent, world class coach to take us to Cameroon 2021 and Qatar 2022, if we expect a good showing in these tournaments.
To rely on Rohr who lives and shops for players abroad is to court disaster. We cannot put our hopes for the big matches on a coach who has nothing special to offer, apart from excuses.
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