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Super Eagles coach Gernot Rohr during a media parley in Lagos clarified several issues in the national team, ahead of their AFCON qualifiers versus Benin and Lesotho.
On the Super Eagles vs Benin Republic match, he said:
Everyone wants to beat Nigeria, it is normal. We also want to win there (Porto Novo), so it’s a big challenge because they’ve not lost a match at home in eight years. You should expect a team (Eagles) that wants to play good football first, who are going to show Nigerians that they are fighting for their country and are able to do well in Porto Novo against the team who haven’t lost a game at home, since losing 3-1 to Algeria in a World Cup qualifier in 2013. It’s a huge challenge for us to go and try to win, knowing a point will earn us qualification. We’ve had a good training session and we will go there to qualify. If we can win, we will, but already, a draw is enough for us to qualify. Qualification is our target. The Squirrels are a good team, they came to their country on chartered flight, we couldn’t do the same. In the worst case, we still have the game against Lesotho here, but I’m very confident that we can qualify in Porto Novo.
On Paul Onuachu,
Onuachu is part of the team. I invited him for his first match with the Eagles, and he scored a goal after seven seconds. Then people were waiting for him to continue that way, but he couldn’t. He is part of our team, a very important player, but sometimes we also have to lookout for other players who deserve to have a chance. Paul has been with us for almost two years now and we also wanted the opportunity to see Sadiq (Umar), but unfortunately, his club did not release him.
We have other centre forwards like Terem Moffi; we have to give them the opportunity to show what they have, but we cannot invite four centre forwards. Normally, we can have only two. Paul was on the standby list, he is here and that is what is important. The same people who were asking, ‘why are you playing him’ were the same people asking why he was omitted from the initial list of 23.
This post was written by Chinedu Ibeakanma.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.