Nigeria’s Minister of Sports Sunday Dare has frowned at the absence of the incumbent Super Eagles coach Gernot Rohr during the training of the home based Eagles ahead of the forthcoming international friendly game with the Mexican national team on July 3.
The Sports Minister who was informed moments when he arrived at the team’s training camp in Abuja that the coach had traveled ahead of the home based Eagles for the friendly game, expressed his unhappiness with the absence of the Franco-German tactician.
He also used the medium to issue a stern warning to Super Eagles coach to henceforth stop the habit of discriminating against players from the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).
Dare stated that the NFF needs to call him to order because Nigeria cannot have a technical coach who will discriminate among our players and also added that Rohr must find a way of blending the Home-Based players and foreign-based players in the senior national team.
He said; “I just found out that he has traveled ahead, but I think it’s important that we’ll tell the NFF; The NFF needs to call Gernot Rohr to order because we cannot have a technical coach who will discriminate among our players,” the Minister responded to a question over the absence of the German from the camp.
“They are football players and they have talents you cannot discriminate against. His attitude towards Home-based players is unacceptable, it is negative to our football development in this country and I call on the NFF to call him to order, I call on the NFF to hold him by the content, by the letter of his contract.
“But beyond that, he needs to shut up and do the work for which he was hired to do, he talks too much. We have started the process now. We’ll make sure that these players here, we can measure their talents and skills, and he must blend the home-based players with foreign-based players.
“We must return to the strength of our football development, in the past, we’ve seen a mixture of five, six home-based players hold our defence so tight and then you bring in foreign-based players who do the damage upfront; it has always worked for us.
“Since we departed from just assembling 99 percent of our players which is an easy ride for any technical adviser, we’ve struggled to score goals and we end up with draws without scoring goals,” the Sports Minister added.
