Super Eagles coach, Gernot Rohr, has come out to tell Nigerians why he was hesitant to start Samuel Chukwueze in matches, especially in Saturday’s match when the Eagles were following Cameroon 1-2.
The German coach came up with a defence after his players beat Cameroon at the Alexandria Stadium in Egypt.
Super Eagles coach, Gernot Rohr, when questioned at the post match conference on why he did not introduce the Villarreal player in place of Moses Simon when the Eagles were trailing 1-2, Rohr responded that it was for tactical reasons.
He went further to say that Moses Simon, who plies his football trade with Levante of Spain, was a better defensive player who could keep the foraging Cameroonians like Oyongo in check from doing any damage.
According to Rohr, “when you have some offensive players like the left-back from Cameroon (Oyongo), who comes forward all the time, and you have a strong offensive player like Chukwueze who is not good defensively, then you need a player like Moses Simon who plays more defensively in his club”.
“That was why I started Moses Simon to stabilise the team and bring in Chukwueze at the right time, 60 minutes of the game,” Rohr said, however, adding that “I don’t believe it changed the result but it helped us to score the two goals and win”.
The Super Eagles are staying back in Alexandria to do a post mortem of their journey so far before proceeding to Cairo Monday where they will take on surprise qualifiers, Bafana Bafana of South Africa who shocked host Egypt by a solitary goal before their mammoth supporters who thronged the Cairo International Stadium to cheer them.
Leave a Reply