Ex-international, Chief Olusegun Odegbami, MON, has raised the alarm over Super Eagles’ coach, Gernot Rohr’s resolve to continue bringing into the national team, players who were born and nurtured outside the country.
According to Odegbami, those players cannot raise the standard of the senior national team, especially when they play tough opponents in the World Cup qualifiers. He called on football authorities to call Rohr to order and stop him from destroying the good work he has started in the World Cup qualifiers.
“Now, Coach Rohr is experimenting by importing Nigerian players fed exclusively on the diet of European grassroots football. These are players without the natural characteristics of the home-grown players. With the way things are unfolding under Rohr, in the not too distant future, the Super Eagles may be dominated by a legion of European-born and honed football players, technically sound but lacking the flamboyance, flair, fighting spirit, showmanship, physicality and die-hard attitude of the local home breed when it comes to matches against Cameroon and Ghana in particular, their two fiercest rivals on the continent,” he said.
Odegbami said he was amazed when Rohr recently invited more foreigners to feature in the London friendly duel against Senegal.
He added, “Recently, as the Eagles prepared to play a friendly duel in London, names of invited players, which Nigerians had never seen nor were familiar with, sprung up. And the number of these ‘strangers’ representing Nigeria is growing. The list of such invited players included Carl Ikeme, William Troost Ekong, Leon Balogun, Ola Aina, and Tyronne Ebuehi. Yet, there are more of these players on coach Rohr’s radar. “I am not quite sure, but the concern in local beer parlours in Nigeria now is whether with more of these players, the Super Eagles will be able to play with their characteristic style and intensity that defines Nigerian football and makes it attractive to global football purists.
With very difficult matches still ahead in the World Cup 2018 African qualifiers, Odegbami expressed worry as to how the foreign legion of Eagles would square up to teams like Cameroon and Algeria.
He said, “These are matches where winning requires much more than technical ability on the field, where matches are driven and won by sheer fighting spirit, physicality and passion fuelled by a deep rivalry that makes the matches between the countries look like war.
Recall that several stakeholders had raised their voice against Rohr’s total blackout of the home-based players in the senior national team.
Ex-internationals like Etim Esin, had urged Rohr to give home-based players the opportunity in the national team, saying that some of the established names in the industry were encouraged from the local league to play in the national team.
