President of the Nigeria Football Federation ( NFF) Amaju Pinnick is not in tandem with the coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Gernot Rohr on two issues ahead of the next round of international games.
Nigeria will take on South Africa in the AFCON 2019 Qualifiers before playing Uganda at home in Asaba, a pitch which Rohr isn’t entirely satisfied with after watching the Aiteo Cup final match between Enugu Rangers and Kano Pillars.
Pinnick insist it’s not the job of the coach to pick match venues for the Super Eagles, hence the game will be played in Asaba regardless of what the Franco-German coach of the team thinks.
“Rohr has not told me anything on the Asaba venue yet. Based on the situation on ground, when a state government decides to sponsor about 70 per cent of a game, it will go a long way to settle some issues. With my experience as a football administrator, with due respect to the coach, the Asaba pitch is okay for the Super Eagles to play. I will call Rohr to clarify the statement,” he said.
Furthermore he also said the coach should pick some local based players and he made reference to the game against Seychelles, where Nigeria used full fledged professionals to prosecute a game which he believe the home base lads can handle.
He called on the coach to monitor the Nigeria Profesional Football League ( NPFL) and monitor players who are good enough to play for the senior national team of Nigeria to curb the dependency on foreign based players all the time.
“Gernot Rohr’s continuous focus on foreign-based players for national team’s assignments is not right. If he uses foreign-based players against a team like Seychelles, I wonder what would happen when we play against big teams like Cameroon and the others.
“Rohr should imitate Super Falcons’ coach, who is always in the country sourcing for domestic talents for his team”, he added.
