New Telegraph

It ‘ll be tough to pick players for AFCON ties –Rohr

Following the unimpressive international friendly matches against Dessert Foxes of Algeria and Carthage Eagles of Tunisia, Nigeria’s Super Eagles Manager, Gernot Rohr, has said that it will be extremely difficult for him to select players for the upcoming 2021 African Cup of Nations qualifiers due to the performance of the newly-invited players. Eagles drew 1-1 in their second international friendly match against Carthage Eagles of Tunisia on Tuesday night at Jaque Lemmans Arena in Austria after losing to Algeria 1-0 in the first.

Although the coach reacted to the performance of newly-invited players in the early hours of Wednesday and also applaud their commitment, he was quick to add that it would be tough picking the starting eleven against Sierra Leone. Rohr expects the new boys to push regular stars for spots in the Super Eagles and the German tactician confesses that they will give him selection headaches when preparing the list for November games against Sierra Leone. “Indeed, the results could have been better. We could have picked a draw against Algeria and a win against Tunisia,” Rohr told the Super Eagles Media team.

“We have some positives to pick out from the games because in spite of missing some key players we still competed well. “Now it is going to be difficult for me to pick our list for the AFCON qualifiers next month because of the new boys who did well,” he said.

“I believe these very good friendly games will help us to return to winning ways when we play Sierra Leone next month (home and away). Good results next month may see us qualifying for the 2022 AFCON already.” Kelvin Akpoguma, Zaidu Sanusi Tijani Samson and Frank Onyeka made their debut against Algeria while Bright Ejuke and Cyril Dessers also made their debut against Tunisia

Read Previous

Shorunmu tips Maduka Okoye for glory

Read Next

Beyond the SARS brawl

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *