Femi Solaja
Nigeria’s Super Eagles’ manager, Gernot Rohr seems to be at the centre of the storm. Only two days ago, his employer, Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), issued him a query over breach of contract agreement and for this and others reasons, former Nigerian international, Kingsley Onye has teamed up with those who believe the coach has not done enough to be retained as Super Eagles gaffer.
Onye, who is based in the United Kingdom, in a telephone interview with ThisdaySports yesterday expressed his disgust at the levels at which the Super Eagles are currently operating.
“Their performance at the last Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt was not impressive at all”, said the left footed defender who was a member of the Flying Eagles squad that placed third in the then World Youth Championship now renamed U20 World Cup.
The performance remains evergreen considering that it is the 1989 squad that did better emerging runners-up in Saudi Arabia.
To Onye, Nigeria’s football is currently sliding considering the results posted by the various national teams including the beach soccer squad, the U23 side, the Super Falcons and also the U17 team.
He faulted the lingering goalkeeping problems the Super Eagles have been having for nearly five years now and advocated for a thorough search for Nigerian players within the country and around the globe.
In the face of the dwindling standard, he singled out Samuel Chukwueze as a striker to watch while also lending his support for the efforts to make Queens Park Rangers midfielder, Eze to switch allegiance to Nigeria.
Onye called on the involvement of some Nigerian former internationals to get integrated into the coaching class so as to regenerate the stars.
“Lets look towards people like Taribo West, Nwankwo Kanu as former players who could help develop new talents”, remarked Onye.
“Kanu can be inspirational to the up coming stars. With a combination with another star like Taribo they can combine to give ideas on how international assignments are executed having been there before and having trained under some of the best coaches in Europe apart from playing for top clubs.”
Surprisingly, Austin Jay Jay Okocha was conspicuously absent in his list. He explained that a player like Okocha is exceptional and his skills are difficult to replicate.
Onye explained that while Samson Siasia and Christian Chukwu were on the saddle as Super Eagles’ manager, he acted as scouts for them.
But it has been difficult to point out a Nigerian coach to handle the Super Eagles owing to their lining towards nepotism.
He found it difficult to name a current Nigerian coach as a possible successor to the troubled Gernot Rohr as he described Manu Garba as having led the worse Nigerian U17 team in history.
On Imama Amapakabo, Onye said that the U23 coach was to be a member of their 1985 Flying Eagles to Soviet Union but was decamped as a goalkeeper. “He nearly took Rangers down the season after the club won the Nigerian league in 2016.
He believed that Nigeria might have to look to the members of the 1994 Super Eagles to get a successor to Gernot Rohr whose contract he believed should not be renewed.
Meanwhile, embattled coach has explained the true state of his contract with the Nigeria Football Federation ( NFF) as the row over extending his contract continue to be in public discuss.
Although the coach is pushing for an extension, however fresh clauses in the supposed new agreement is what is making the the two parties not to shift stand.
” My contract will expire in June 2020, we have started the qualifiers in a good way now to qualify. So I am ready to discuss because I have also other Federations who want to have me but I tell them that for the moment my priority is to discuss with the NFF.
” That’s the situation but after the 1st of January, I am free to sign where I want after the 1st of July I will be free to sign where I want. This is the situation that is why I think the next step will be to wait and see what the NFF is doing.
“We have our team, our plan, our project . We have our program to go to the AFCON and to start well in the World Cup qualifiers because everybody want to go to the World Cup and this team has a good chance to go there”,Rohr told Owngoalnigeria.com.
