Chairman of the Nigerian Football Coaches Association Ladan Bosso has faulted Super Eagles coach Gernot Rohr for constantly ignoring home-based players in selecting players for the senior national team.
The Franco-German tactician has relied heavily on foreign-based players for Super Eagles games and tournaments, overlooking their domestic counterparts whom he claims are not good enough.
Rohr’s persistent snub of home-based lads has prompted the Nigeria Football Federation to insert a clause in his new contract offer which mandates him to live in Nigeria and watch league matches so he can ‘nurture’ domestic players.
While reckoning that Rohr has done well since he took charge of the 3-time African champions in 2016, Bosso berated the former Gabon and Burkina Faso coach for not giving some of the finest players in the Nigeria Professional Football League a chance in his team.
“In the first place, as far as I am concerned, Gernot Rohr has extremely done well,” the former Abia Warriors coach said. “The only issue is that he has not been encouraging the local lads in the national team. That’s the only area I found fault in him.
“As a technical adviser of the senior national team, you are to put glamour in the local league. Putting glamour in the local means inviting those players who are doing well in the league from time to time.
“I cannot see any reason why we say we are lacking strikers those days and you cannot go and pick, maybe, the top three scorers in the league. You are supposed to be inviting them so they can get polished one time or the other they’ll gradually come into the team.
“By the time they start moving around with those foreign-based players, I think that will give them confidence. That’s the only area where I find fault in Gernot Rohr.”
Otherwise, the former Flying Eagles coach believes Rohr is a good coach and has done well in qualifying Nigeria for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the 2019 AFCON quite easily.
“He is not a bad coach because the most important thing is that since he started handling the national team, we have always been qualifying. Even before the end of the qualifying series, we know that we are already there,” the former Bayelsa United and Kano Pillars coach said.
“That alone shows that he is doing well.”
