QATAR 2022: Rohr empathizes with Eagles as Amokachi blames failure to qualify on ‘rejected players’ 

'The Bull' called on football administrators in Nigeria to return to developmental structures that saw the national team reach greater heights.

QATAR 2022: Rohr empathizes with Eagles as Amokachi blames failure to qualify on ‘rejected players’ 
Rohr-Amokachi

Former Super Eagles forward, Daniel Amokachi has claimed that the country fielded “rejected players” in their 2022 World Cup playoff against Ghana.

Amokachi, speaking on SuperSport, called on football administrators in Nigeria to return to developmental structures that saw the national team reach greater heights.

Of late, the Super Eagles have often relied on dual-eligible players who were born abroad.

Ola Aina, Joe Aribo, Calvin Bassey, William Troost-Ekong, Leon Balogun and Ademola Lookman are some of the stars who opted to play for Nigeria.

“Quality-wise we can’t take it away from Nigeria. Every day Nigeria is blessed with one immigrant player who is playing out there and he’ll always come up and say I turned down my birth country, I want to play for Nigeria when their country of birth never looked for them. They won’t even make their birth nation squads.

“Unfortunately for us Nigeria, we’ve thrown away our developmental structure which we had that made us win the 1996 Olympics gold medal that made that generation so great.

“Stephen Keshi came into play and revived it and we saw how we won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations,” Amokachi said. 

Meanwhile, former Super Eagles coach, Gernot Rohr has sympathized with the national team following Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Rohr is optimistic that there is still hope for the Super Eagles despite not qualifying for the 2022 World Cup.

Rohr told Sports Day “I hope that Nigeria will come back and the players we have will fight together again and write a better page in future for Nigeria football,”

Rohr was sacked as Super Eagles head coach by the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, just a few weeks before the start of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, in Cameroon.

The 68-year-old German was replaced by Augustine Eguavoen on an interim basis.

However, the NFF sacked Eguavoen, including all the technical coaching crew of the Super Eagles on Thursday, after Ghana defeated Nigeria in Abuja.