No more time for experimentation – Rohr

by Staff Reporter

Thursday Nov 21, 2019. 11:00

Nigeria coach Gernot Rohr has suggested that the time for experimentation is over and he will move ahead with the current squad for the foreseeable future.

The Super Eagles will enter an intensive phase of qualification in both the 2022 FIFA World Cup and 2021 Africa Cup of Nations preliminaries next year, which means no friendly matches and little chance to try new things.

“There are no more friendlies, so there is no more time to invite new players we don’t know,” Rohr told reporters.

“We need harmony in the team and if you are bringing in new players to do better for the team than they are doing now, which one do you want to push out of the team? Those players must be really better than what we have already.”

Rohr says that if he had a fully fit squad, he should have enough firepower to be successful.

“I hope everybody will be fit, we miss some players for the [Nations Cup] qualifiers like Oghenekaro Etebo and Bryan Idowu, who could not come. But now there is a very good competition for starting positions, which is very good for the level of the team.

“It is good to have competition and to have such good players, now we have four very good central defenders but I have to choose two, or play three like we did in the second half in Lesotho.”