- Rohr has an enviable win/loss ratio in addition to fulfilling all the targets contained in his contract to date
By Tiko Okoye
Super Eagles’ coach, Gernot Rohr, faced a fusillade of verbal missiles from a small number of vociferous critics right from the very day his hiring was announced in 2016 by the President of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), Amaju Pinnick. The sniggering and snickering ultimately snowballed into a deafening clamour for him to be sacked “with immediate effect and automatic alacrity” after the Super Eagles grinded a listless 1-1 draw against visiting Cape Verde to round off a very nervy first round Qatar 2022 World Cup elimination series that even saw a football minion like the Central African Republic beat us in our very own backyard.
I’m fully persuaded that if any debate is to be objective and purposeful, “We must,” as Scottish-born English prose writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) posited, “be firm believers in the maxim that, for all right judgement of any man or thing, it is useful, nay essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.” I also fully align myself with the poignant averment of American poet Will Carleton (1845-1912) to the effect that “To appreciate heaven well it is good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of hell.”
Rohr was contracted after a string of indigenous coaches yielded disastrous outcomes, as the Nigerian team under Samson Siasia, Emmanuel Amunike, and Sunday Oliseh failed to qualify for two successive AFCONs in 2015 and 2017. For football-crazy Nigerians this was akin to literally experiencing 15 minutes of pure hell, hence a majority of Nigerians welcomed the news of the hiring of a foreign coach with a huge sigh of relief.
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In the months immediately following Rohr’s assumption of duties, the Super Eagles broke the jinx by qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and doing so in spectacular fashion. Nigeria was in a group dubbed the ‘Group of Death’ as all four nations – Algeria, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Zambia – had won the tournament at one time or the other. Not many Nigerians gave their team the slightest chance of qualifying from that obviously hazardous group. In the end, the Super Eagles not only saw off all the heavyweights but picked the qualification ticket with a game to spare!
Rohr was again to guide the Super Eagles to qualify for the 2019 AFCON tournament in Egypt after Nigeria failed to qualify for back-to-back Africa Cup of Nations – again with a game to spare! – where the team won a bronze medal.
Ok, so we qualified for AFCON and the World Cup with a game to spare on each occasion, and still made no impact in the main event. And this time around, we are grinding out qualifications at the last minute with what traducers see as “lacklustre performances.” Still, there’s no need for the doomsday prophecies. We need to exercise some degree of patience on this matter lest in rushing to resolve a pressing challenge we end up creating a far bigger one. Karma, they say, is a bitch and that what goes around comes around!
When Rohr was scouting the globe in search of players he could transform into world beaters, professional critics loudly wondered when he would stop the mass invitation of players and bring stability to the team; yet when he finally crystallized a crop of players who have earned his trust and confidence, the same critics are accusing him of extirpating competition “by making the team some players’ birth right”! Nigerian armchair football analysts – heads they win and tails Rohr loses!
Some who ought to know better are even accusing Rohr of failing to incorporate local league players into the Super Eagles. Wonders will never end! Are not our serial disgusting performances in the African Nations Championship (CHAN) Cup for homegrown league players enough evidence of the shambolic state of the Nigeria Professional Football League so where would the local players to be incorporated into the Super Eagles come from? To side-step being accused of seeking to compare apples and oranges I’ve left out Asian, American, and European leagues and picked South Africa. Can anyone seriously compare our professional league with the Premier Soccer League (PSL)?
Besides, check the national teams of great football nations like Argentina, Belgium, Brazil and France, among others, and you can verify that most of their players ply their trade in other countries. The benefits are two-fold: First, the players enrich their experience by playing with/against other world-class players, building much-needed flair and self-confidence in the process. Second, remittances from players abroad constitute a significant proportion of foreign exchange earnings for the countries involved. In the final analysis, are these players no longer bona fide Nigerian citizens and are to be treated as football outcasts for plying their trade abroad? Does Rohr’s tour of duties include revamping and managing our domestic leagues?
Some are even talking – yet again – of reverting to the use of local coaches. They point to an array of ex-Nigerian professionals who, in their opinion, can readily and easily coach the Super Eagles. I beg to differ. In doing so, I won’t talk of how difficult it has been for indigenous coaches to instil discipline in players with oversized egos, nor will I speak of the cash-for-invitation scandals that are constantly associated with this set of coaches.
Suffice to say that being a talented football player does not automatically translate to being an excellent coach. Great players who became excellent coaches can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There’s an unbridgeable chasm between playing as a member of a team and managing/coaching an entire team.
Because Rohr has made it look so easy with the way players in the Diaspora are rushing to don the jersey of the Super Eagles, we have quickly forgotten how irksome, frustrating, and difficult it was in time past to get talented Nigerian players abroad to proudly answer the call to be part and parcel of the national men’s team. It goes without saying that the coach of the Super Eagles must be someone coaches abroad can easily respect and relate to as not less than an equal in order to maintain an excellent working relationship.
In a nutshell, does Rohr have a valid contract or not? Are there or are there not enshrined procedures for either contracted party to exit voluntarily or forcibly? If the man has never defaulted on any key performance indicator (KPI) enshrined in his contract why then is he being so shabbily treated? The entire charade simply demonstrates the levity with which we handle contractual matters in this country.
A school of critics contends that Rohr’s raving success in stabilizing the Super Eagles notwithstanding, his boys are not playing ‘entertaining football.’ But, is it better – in a competitive match when “victory isn’t everything, but the only thing” (Green Bay Packers American Football Club coach Vince Lombardi) – to play ‘tiki-taka’ and lose or play ‘dirty’ and win? It is a trite saying that the job security of a coach hinges on the outcome of the last match. Still, Rohr has an enviable win/loss ratio in addition to fulfilling all the targets contained in his contract to date. He ought to be provided with the latitude and confidence he seriously needs to complete what he started.
