Nigerian football great has said Gernot Rohr took the country for a ride
Football legend, Segun Odegbami has said the former coach of the Super Eagles, Gernot Rohr hasn’t shown gratitude to Nigeria.
Writing on his weekly column, Odegbami said the Franco-German coach didn’t deliver on the mandate given to him by the NFF yet is in line to collect close to $380,000 after being sacked.
He said dismissals are normal for coaches and explained they happen for different reasons.
“There is nothing special about firing an unproductive coach as was the case with Gernot Rohr who failed in five and a half years to win any Silverware with the Super Eagles.
“So, he was fired and offered the promise of his 6 months wages in lieu of the sack. Instead of being grateful to the country that gave him opportunity to get an international appointment, that elevated his football credentials and profile, that paid him stupendous wages that he never earned or deserved with his limited credentials, he went ahead and took the NFF to the court of FIFA seeking additional compensation for ‘wrongful’ termination of his contract. Pure balderdash?” Odegbami wrote.
He added that the NFF defended Rohr throughout his tenure while Nigerian football got worse.
“It was a demonstration of the worst form of ingratitude. Except of course, if there was more to the whole matter than met the eyes. A microscopic examination of the entire Gernot Rohr chapter in Nigerian football history would have revealed the true picture of his relationship with those behind his engagement in the NFF. It is easy to conclude that there must be more to the sack than meets the eye.
“Gernot, obviously, saw Nigeria as a mumu country to be milked. Otherwise, how would he have had the audacity to do what he did? Three years ago, with the threat of sanctions that never existed in his contract, Nigerians set aside all their misgivings about his competency and gave him a second life-line with a new contract. His employers insisted Nigeria would be heavily sanctioned if he was sacked at the time because of clauses in the contract that tied inextricably to the Super Eagles.
“He still did not deliver and his employers, the NFF, kept defending his ‘failures’ by selling the yarn that he fulfilled the mandate they gave him to qualify the country for specific stages of AFCON and the World Cup. They limited the mandates to unacceptable minimum levels, kept him as coach, and agonisingly ‘killed’ Nigerians with poor results.
“We were so ‘mumu’ that the German coached from Europe. He remained in Europe for most of the 6 years watching matches involving Nigerian players, identifying those he invited for two or three days to play matches, lost several of the ordinary matches in Africa, and still collected humongous wages that could have funded huge developments in Nigerian football of local coaches, grassroots players, and so on, more profitable ventures than sustaining what now looks like a financial racket.