By Our Correspondent
Its good news to football fans. At last the signals we’re receiving from the football house is that our unders performing coach, Gernot Rohr is finally on his way out.
Nigeria bore the burden of keeping a coach who neither understands our football, nor shows any interest in developing our footballers. Yet, the contract he signed completely secures his job without any obligation to perform or get fired, which is the modern trend in coaches’ contract around the world today.
Our local coaches like the late Stephen Keshi and Amodu Shuaibu, won laurels for this country, yet they were never accorded the respect they deserved; instead, both were humiliated and made to carry that agony to their graves.
Rohr, meanwhile, lives in Europe and does little to help our team win matches. Virtually all our crucial matches were won by luck or because of the natural individual talents of the players.
At last, even Sunday Dare, Minister of Sport and Youth Development, has finally given the nod to the Nigerian Football Federation, NFF, to relieve Rohr of his job. This probably came as a welcome news to the Franco – German gaffer. Now, the question many Nigerian soccer buffs are asking is: What’s next, Who’s next?
In an excellent article, Mathematical Segun Odegbami recently spoke the minds of most pundits on this vexed question of who should be Nigeria’s next coach. The key points of the article is reproduced below:
Next Super Eagles coach – this Mumu must stop, now!
On this matter, every Nigerian is an expert and has an opinion. So, this is mine.
…. Most Nigerians are in an unwritten agreement that Gernot Rohr must go.
Our collective Mumu (stupidity) must stop…having been fooled and held down for too long by the colonial mentality that ‘anything White is better’.
For God’s sake…engaging a coach is not going to the moon!
Lately, we even went to the shameful depth of engaging a White coach who….did not physically do anything of substance to impact the game in the country, did not develop a single player, did not help a single club or academy, did not win any laurels, did not even stay in the country long enough to pretend to be working…. How did that happen in this 21st Century? ….and to imagine that that foolery went on for 6 years in a country that boasts some of the most intelligent and most educated homo sapiens, is simply unbelievable.
The rumor is that the administrators are preparing to hire another one.
Nigerians have to wake up from that nightmarish dream and not… head back to their immediate ‘vomit’.
Why are we falling for this Mumu again?
There can be no gain without pain.
The Black person must make the needed sacrifices…as this is the final frontier. The evidence is all around that in virtually all fields of human endeavour, you find Nigerians… Working hard, and becoming world leaders.
Even the late Nelson Mandela, reminded us before his death:
“The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The Black people of the world need Nigeria to be great, as a source of pride and confidence”
Are we so blinded by selfish interests and personal gains that we cannot see the damage being done to the psyche of all our young Nigerian players when we say they are good enough as players but not good enough to be managers in football..That what this is all about.
Once again, football is not rocket science.
That why every Nigerian is an ‘expert’.
Nigeria must prepare Nigerian ex-players to become models of good coaching… locking up their superstardom as players in the closet of their rooms, working diligently, and embracing the power of humility to lead young Nigerian football players in clubs and the national teams down the familiar path they walked to succeed.
Finally, the revolution might as well start now, on the eve of AFCON 2022.
The decision…. is one that requires the courage of a long-distance runner…determined…. to get to the finish line.
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