Former Super Eagles coach, Gernot Rohr, has revealed his worst moment coaching the Nigerian team, Super Eagles.
The German professional football manager said the highest governing body of football in the world, Fédération Internationale de Football Association, (FIFA) ordered the Nigerian government to pay him $377,879.46, after breaching the contract, yet it is still not done.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) recalls that Rohr dragged the NFF before FIFA on a $1m compensation claim for unfair dismissal.
Rohr pointed out that the President of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, Amaju Pinnick, at the World Cup, said to the players in the dressing room after the match, that he is a great coach, one of the best coaches and two months later, he sacked him.
“The worst day was when we were supposed to celebrate that we had qualified for the play-offs and we were called to say that we are sacked, unfair and painful. When we came Nigeria was 67 in FIFA rankings and 13 in Africa. When I left, Nigeria was 32 in the world and fourth in Africa.” he said.
Speaking on how he felt when Nigeria exited at the group stage at the World Cup in Russia, Rohr said; “I was disappointed, but it was the youngest team of the World Cup. We all must accept this lack of experience in the last minutes of games and also, there were regrets because of the penalty, there was a clear handball for us and unfortunately, no second penalty (was given to us). After our last World Cup game against Argentina, we got many congratulations for the performances of our team, the youngest in the competition.”
The former Super Eagles coach noted that members of his staff are still waiting for the bonuses for the last game they won together.
Explaining how he felt about the Super Eagles performances at the 2021 AFCON and 2022 World Cup playoffs, Rohr maintained that, “I think we built a really good team that could have done better if we carried on with the momentum we had. I was sad for the players because they deserved better.
“We were getting the desired results and we were not sluggish. We played attacking football scoring a lot of goals and having good goals scorers all the time, you know them, (Odion) Ighalo, (Victor) Osimhen and others. We created chances in all the games, even in the ones we lost or maybe drew. The most important was to get results and also to allow young players to progress and to learn.
“Football is not a game of small or big teams; you can lose to anyone at any time. It’s a part of the game. Argentina lost to us in the friendly, Iceland lost to us in the World Cup, Brazil drew with us, and we played with a very young team, and they still had to learn. The (African) champions Cameroon lost to us in World Cup qualifiers and AFCON. There are so many examples.”
