SEYCHELLES 0-3NIGERIA: NFF chiefs KICK over Rohr’s 21 euro-based pros

Chieftains of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) have kicked against Super Eagles manager Gernot Rohr’s decision to invite 21 Euro-based players to prosecute the September 8 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Seychelles, which the Nigerian side won by three unreplied goals.

Sportinglife.ng gathered from those who should know at the Glasshouse in Abuja, who were in Victoria to watch the game that the thought of picking 21 European-based players for a game against a football minnow was too expensive.

They posited that it was an economic waste to replace injured players with European stars, instead of looking towards the domestic league to pick more home-based players, especially in the defence.

Indeed, the NFF chiefs’ anger blew over the roof when Rohr started Odion Ighalo as the team’s main striker instead of Henry Onyekuru who is apparently the better striker in Europe, since Ighalo has failed to score in the team in the last three matches, scoring only a penalty against Seychelles to end the game at 3-0 in Nigeria’s favour.

The football administrators couldn’t understand how Nigeria’s best player at the Russia 2018 World Cup could be played on the bench, with flops such as Oguenyi Onazi, Brian Idowu and Chigozie Awaziem being fielded. They dismissed the suggestion that Awaziem scored a goal in the matches, insisting that it would have been a travesty if he couldn’t score the goal with a yawing goalpost in front of him.

They wondered what Rohr wanted to achieve by playing Onyekuru for six minutes in spite of the fact that Ighalo was anonymous throughout the game, except for the penalty goal which he expertly converted.