November 28, (THEWILL) – In his fifth year as Head Coach of the Super Eagles, Gernot Rohr is currently the longest-serving manager of the senior men’s national football team, but the indicators point to the fact that that is as far as he may go. In fact, on Thursday, November 18, the rumour of his sacking quickly went viral online and was widely welcomed by many football fans, who were only too pleased to see the end of the German’s time handling the national team.
That reaction can be understood in the context of the desire of football fans to win trophies, on the one hand, and be impressed by the overall team performance when they play in the Green and White of the national team, on the other. However, since August 2016, when Rohr was named head coach and in all the years that have followed in his record-extending stay in the managerial dugout, he has yet to fully attain either of these.
In the build-up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, Rohr’s charges won qualification with a game to spare, but the German tactician was in charge of the Nigerian squad that did not make it out of the group stage. The following year, the German gaffer guided the Super Eagles to a third-place finish at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, after Nigeria defeated Tunisia 1-0, thanks to an early goal by Odion Ighalo. But, that was underwhelming by the Super Eagles’ standard.
Although Rohr has led the Super Eagles in 54 international matches over the course of his five years and three months in charge, winning 28 matches for a 56 per cent win record, the fact that he has no silverware to boast of and cannot consistently demonstrate the tactical wherewithal required for the high stakes football competitions, which the Super Eagles are often engaged in, has been his undoing. Ardent football fans have found it difficult to warm up to his team’s lacklustre performances and inconsistencies over time.
The groundswell of distaste for the tactics, or lack thereof, of the manager in the games he managed in his capacity as head coach took on extra weight after the 4-4 draw against Sierra Leone in Nigeria during the qualifiers for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in November last year. Rohr’s side surrendered a 4-nil lead from the first half to concede four goals in the second half, squandering two crucial points in the process.
It was a mortal concession in the minds of many fans and unpardonable in their eyes. The fan reaction reached the Nigerian Football Federation’s management and the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development that a meeting was immediately called to address the embarrassment. It was resolved to effect changes to the team and team management to forestall a repetition of similar results.
However, even if the Super Eagles avoided a recurrence during the AFCON qualifying series and booked their ticket at the top of their group, a worse result was lurking in the shadows, waiting to draw the ire of Nigeria’s fiercest football fans all over again. It came with the November 2021 international break of qualifying fixtures for the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The date was October 7 and the venue, the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos. Rohr suffered the ignominy of being the manager to break a 40-year-old record that had seen Nigeria remain unbeaten at home in a World Cup qualifier. Since a 1981 loss to Algeria at home, Nigeria has consistently avoided defeat until a star-studded side drew blanks for 90 minutes and faltered in a defensive mix-up to allow continental underdogs, the Central African Republic, to grab an unprecedented 1-0 win and all three points on their return home.
It was too much of a bitter pill to continue to swallow. As core football pundits argued against opinions that were in favour of Rohr when the rumours of his sack rent the social media platforms that November 18, it was not just the pain of the unimaginable draw against Sierra Leone and the underwhelming loss to CAR in Lagos that mattered in assessing the manager’s tactical ability to continue in his position. Even in games that the Super Eagles emerged victorious, there was the evident absence of technical identity that can be attributable to Rohr’s direct impact, without which the win could have been impossible.
In his half-a-decade in charge, many of those who argue that the German should be left in his position, at least for the upcoming AFCON and possibly the World Cup playoffs, still cannot convincingly identify what the Rohr football strategy is in the same way that it was easy to point to a style typical to the Eagles’ sides managed by the Dutch pair of Clemens Westerhof and Jo Bonfrere in times of the golden age of Nigerian football and by domestic coaches, such as the late Stephen Okechukwu Keshi.
In the five years that Westerhof was in charge, the Dutchman turned the Super Eagles into a perennial powerhouse in African football and showed that the squad could compete on the world stage. Under Westerhof, the Super Eagles won the 1994 AFCON and also qualified for the second round of the FIFA World Cup that year, while Bonfrere, who was coach for about three years, is unforgettable as the coach that took Team Nigeria all the way to the 1996 Summer Olympics gold medal in Atlanta, Georgia, defeating world beaters, Argentina and Brazil, on the way to a gold podium finish.
There is not much to identify as unforgettable in Rohr’s time. But the Amaju Melvin Pinnick-led Nigeria Football Federation renewed the terms of his contract on May 27 last year, effectively keeping him on board for another one and a half years. He was given a target of guiding the team to win the 2021 AFCON and qualifying the Super Eagles for Qatar 2022. As poor as the team’s performances have been under him, Rohr has fulfilled one of these targets and qualified for the AFCON. This has put the NFF in a pickle when it comes to firing him as he has satisfied the conditions of his contract so far.
Based on contractual agreements therefore, sources estimate that the NFF will have to pay Rohr, who earns $45,000 per month as salary, about N600 million in compensation if they terminate his contract with a sack notice, as it is said that he pays his coaching staff from his salary and they will be worth a part of the severance package due to him. Although the Sports Ministry will determine if he remains after evaluating a report of his performance from the NFF, there is much to the assumption that he will remain in place and lead Nigeria to AFCON and the playoffs, if he is still in charge then.
Even if the local media is awash with stories about the NFF shopping for a new coach to handle the technical direction of the Super Eagles’ pursuit of a World Cup ticket and a return to continental glory in the imminent AFCON in Cameroon, Rohr’s contract means he remains in charge. Yet, with a target to win the AFCON and with a determination to compete against the best in Africa from the 10 groups entering a playoff competition to bring Africa’s Best Five that will represent the continent in Qatar, it is pertinent to state that the Rohr squad will have to be better than they have so far shown themselves to be. Otherwise, it will be a lot difficult to scale past the playoffs hurdle to earn a berth with the rest of the footballing world going into the November commencement date of the 2022 first-ever World Cup hosted in the Arab world. As aforesaid, teams like Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Liberia and Cape Verde, against which the Super Eagles struggled during qualifiers for AFCON and the World Cup should not make Nigeria sweat in football. Yet, that has been the story over and over again for the Rohr-led Super Eagles’ squad.
The tactical infusion of game strategy and play patterns that take the utmost advantages of the strengths of the Nigerian footballers, who are playing at the very top of European competitions, while exploiting the identified weaknesses of opposition teams, is mostly nonexistent. This very obvious danger has alerted all other teams that they can comfortably take points from playing against Nigeria as the team gradually slips with each new FIFA ranking.
This cannot be allowed to continue and that is why it might be hard to scale through the playoffs. If by a stroke of good fortune, the Eagles do find themselves in Qatar, then a lot more will be expected of the team if they are to avoid the embarrassment of qualifying for a World Cup for which they are poorly prepared.
It will be appalling to witness except, there is a fire brigade approach to sack Rohr and attempt it all with a new manager. For Nigeria, it will not be an impossible thing to consider happening if the question about Rohr being the right man for the job is answered in the negative and a fresh technical crew, domestic or foreign, steps in to right the ship in time for AFCON and the playoffs.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
