Super Eagles coach, Gernot Rohr, has come out to defend why he prefers overseas players to home-based players in the national team.
This defense came after the President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, told him he would be mandated not to leave the country and watch the Nigeria Professional Football League(NPFL) to discover talents if his contract would be renewed.
While defending his choice of players, he spoke to ESPN’s Colin Udoh and said: “We cannot find all the time players in the local league who are better than the other ones (in Europe).”
“The first criterion is the quality of the players. Everybody knows, not only in Nigeria, that the best players are in Europe or somewhere else in professional leagues. That is the fact.
“I invited already more than 23 or 24 local players since I have been in charge of the Super Eagles but we invite them and then immediately they are going to Europe. It is wonderful for them but maybe not for us.”
Rohr also striked out testing new players in the team and said the fixtures of Super Eagles would be jam-packed after the coronavirus pandemic was over.
He said: “When you see the calendar which will come, there will be so many games in the second half of the year. And already decisive games for the World Cup will start in the end of the year. The qualification for AFCON, too, will have to finish before.
“So there will be so many games. Next year, I saw the calendar; perhaps we will have around 20 games.
“If we are in the AFCON, and I think we can do it, we will have one or two friendlies to prepare and then I hope seven games again until the finals. Small final and big final, could be nine games. And then you have the World Cup qualifiers; can be 10, a friendly again or two, 11. (It’s) a lot of matches to come in a small time.
“This is why it is necessary to know everybody, to talk to the players regularly, because there is no time to make new experiences, to make a test or experiments with new players for something like that.”
