Before My Appointment Super Eagles Were Ranked 67th – Rohr Fires Back At Yakubu Aiyegbeni

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Coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Gernot Rohr has hit back at one of his fierce critic in former Super Eagles striker Yakubu Aiyegbeni .

Aiyegbeni has been relentless in his criticism of the coach insisting that the team hasn’t made any appreciable progress since Rohr was employed in 2016 as coach of the team.

Rohr who isn’t known to be vocal in an interview with ESPN by respected Nigerian journalist Colin Udoh hit back with a reminder of the low ranking of the Super Eagles before he was appointed as coach.

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Super Eagles were ranked 67th before the coming of the coach and at a time 24th under his guidance but per the new ranking release by FIFA earlier today they are 34th. Nevertheless Rohr pointed it out as part of the progress the team has made under his tutelage.

“All that is a little bit unimportant,” Rohr fired back. “But what I can say is that when I arrived, the FIFA ranking was worse and now it is much better.

“We grew together and the young team won a bronze medal in the last Afcon, with much more teams [competing] than in the past. In the past only 16 teams took part now it is 24 so it is much more difficult to win a medal with so many teams.”
“The mission was in the beginning to go to the World Cup [in 2018]. We didn’t have so much time to prepare the team but we did it, and without losing any game in a very difficult group.
“Then the second mission was to make a younger team. To build a team for the future. So we had the youngest team of the World Cup in 2018. This is what we can say that is important for the future for Nigeria.
“We found this young and new team and the longer [preparation] time is helping a lot, because you don’t have the players for a long time [per international break]. That is an advantage.”
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