Coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Gernot Rohr has picked some areas he believe need improvement in the Nigerian team ahead of the play offs for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
Nigeria booked their passage to the final round of the qualifiers yesterday with a nervy 1-1 draw against Cape Verde, but it was enough for them to finish as group winners as they had two points more than their opponents for the game.
The Nigerian team was a shadow of itself all through the qualifiers despite the avalanche of talented players available to the coach. Their style of play has drawn criticism from fans of the team and Rohr says they are areas he want to see immediate improvement in the team.
Speaking after the Cape Verde game, he picked the attack and defence as two areas which need immediate improvement. He also said the return to full fitness of Samuel Chukwueze and Wilfred Ndidi will help the team as they were not fully fit for the qualifiers.
“The improvement I want to see is to exploit the opportunity we have to score to be more effective offensive. That’s what I want to see and also to play quicker from behind. It’s still too slow from behind for me. I want to have a quicker football with one, two touches coming from behind. Our central defenders still take much time to bring the ball forward”, Rohr said.
”So we have to work on it but you know we have 13 points in this six matches, 13 points in six matches is not a bad result and we have two points more than the second one, which is a good team Cape Verde.
”So after this group stage, we can be optimistic, now we have the time to prepare for the AFCON. Some of our players are coming back from injury. Ndidi, Chukwueze they were not really in the rhythm of the competition. So let’s give a little time to our players and the team will be better and better”.
