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Gentle and boring, cut out for teams with little or no footballing ambitions and no taste for style.
As the Eagles team manager, Gernot Rohr has outlived all usefulness. If Rohr were young and unproductive we could have endured and hoped to reap continuity.
But hanging a spent living albatross on a young team is cruel. 68, boring and sleepy, Rohr must wake up and leave.
The retention of Rohr is comical, naked evidence of an utter lack of ambition. Such a low-energy presence in the heart of the team is a vibe killer.
Gernot Rohr has done his best.
In the last two months, the Eagles have played three world cup qualifiers. In the first two matches, the Eagles were unrecognizable. Short passes went drunkenly astray. Long passes had wayward trajectories. The build-up play was characterized by haphazardness and clumsiness. Fans watched in disbelief. Rohr looked constipated. When a few players attempted redemptive face-saving solo runs to avert the disjointedness, they ended in graceless fumbles.
The public outrage that should have followed was tempered by the unearned victories. So Coach Rohr snored on. The unearned victories in the first two matches fostered the charade. An inquest was not deemed imperative.
Against Cape Verde, away, the gods had worked overtime for us. The Eagles returned and left for their bases. But when the Central African republic visited, the gods had tired out. We played badly and lost woefully at home.
Rohr is sleeping on good fortune
If Rohr had a crop of poor players, then he would have deserved leniency. But the present squad boasts of some of the most prolific attackers in Europe. Our midfielders now play week in week out for elite clubs. Rohr has unity and talent.
Onigbinde and company would have done better with Rohr’s luck. How can a team of Osimen, Iwobi, Aribo, Onyekuru, Ndidi, Etebo, Chukwueze, Simon etc. not dominate Africa with good flowing football?
The Super Eagles used to be alive and fluent. We knew their swashbuckling yet tenacious character. Then, we watched the Eagles with excitement. Now we watch without expectations.
The Eagles have lost their rhythm. On the pitch, they dance embarrassingly discordantly. If when they played without style and purpose the coach chewed his fingernails and kicked water bottles, we would have been comforted.
Consoled by his sense of desire and burden. But Gernot Rohr isn’t conscious of our former standards and immediate expectations. He lacks imagination and creativity. Rohrs passivity deprives the team of vitality and disconnects, sedates the fans.
Gernot Rohr resume is uninspiring.
So Rohr isn’t an accident. Gernot Rohr didn’t lose form. we didn’t get kpuff kpuff after ordering doughnuts. He is a blatant recruitment error.
The last time he achieved anything as a coach was 25 years ago, in 1996. He took Bordeaux to the UEFA cup final.
Rohr has never won any title. His recent coaching experience should have discouraged us. A multitude failed attempts with Niger, Burkina Faso and Etoile du Sahel.
What in Gernot Rohr did the NFF mistake for a promise?
Gernot Rohr might be a nice fellow. Perhaps congenial and willing to stay quiet, smiling even, when being owed. That could be why he was chosen.
If we chose a German journeyman to take our football to where it was in 1994-1996, then gods are not to blame. We had once sworn never to hire a foreign coach for the Super Eagles if he wasn’t world-class. Yes because a country promoting an import substitution economic recovery programme cannot waste scarce foreign resources on international mediocrity.
Gernot Rohr must have some good qualities.
The NFF isn’t dumb. But I doubt that these good qualities are football-related. He looks like a man that can tell stories about ancient Europe.
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Gernot has the beautiful temperament of a nurse. Nice, self-effacing and humble fellow. But what we need is a super eagles team with a character.
A team that we can cheer for even when it is losing badly. A team that can lift our spirits with their style and results. With Gernot Rohr, the Super Eagles are at best pap without sugar, tasteless. When the Super Eagles lose in the manner they lost to the Central African Republic they leave their fans sad and hopeless.
The hopelessness flows from the fact that the world cup is months away and the team seems a decade away from being ready.
Five years of insipidity. Rohr has overstayed
Gernot Rohr has done his best. I know that conscientious employers often lack the courage to sack humble workers whom they owe a stack of unsettled wages.
So the NFF might know that gentle Rohr has failed but can’t ask him to leave. So we must appeal to Gernot Rohr conscience. A man cant give what he doesn’t have. Rohr has no modern coaching clues.
We can give him a national award to entice him. Rohr should be coaching Chad or Somalia. A retirement into a non-league side in Germany might be ideal.
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