November 16, (THEWILL) – According to head coach Gernot Rohr, the senior men’s national football team, the Super Eagles, will take a cautious approach in the last Group C fixture of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers against Cape Verde Islands on Tuesday evening. But, it will do him good to be cautious about his job too.
To secure top rank in the standings and proceed to the final playoff round next year, the Super Eagles simply need to avoid defeat versus the Blue Sharks. Nigeria is coming off a 2-0 away win over Liberia on Saturday, while Cape Verde beat Central African Republic (CAR) 2-1 at home on the same day.
As THEWILL previously reported, Rohr is pleased that the final fixture has extremely high stakes, believing that it would motivate his players to perform better and deliver on the charge to make it to the playoffs.
“Yeah, of course, we have to make a result not to lose the final game,” Rohr had said in his post-match conference following Nigeria’s win over Liberia on Saturday. “But we are at home. It’s good to have pressure for my players. If they believe it’s easy, if they believe it’s done, it’s always difficult.
“So it’s good to play with pressure, so we’ll be able to handle it like we did all the time.”
The German coach, who guided Nigeria to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, is looking to lead them to another World Cup qualifying race in the playoffs. Yet, it must be abundantly clear to Rohr that anything short of reaching that low bar of qualifying for the playoffs may spell the end of his Super Eagles’ adventure.
Although the Eagles were victorious against Liberia, the recurring issue of an inability to find goals still bedevilled a team with an overabundance of attacking prowess. Goals from open play have been hard to come by and not a few have directly laid the blame on Rohr’s doorsteps with many critics doubting the coach’s ability to make tactical inputs that can exploit the players’ skills at his disposal.
It is by no means a guarantee that Nigeria will beat Cape Verde in Lagos as Rohr’s charges have fallen to a less-fancied CAR at the same Teslim Balogun home grounds. And Cape Verde is coming into the game from a comfortable 2-1 win over CAR.
These variables therefore give no true football fan of the national team the boost of confidence to bet that it will be a Nigerian victory without some iota of doubt creeping into that sentiment and creating a cloud of doubt. Because of the inconsistency in the side, the very low bar of simply avoiding a loss at home to Cape Verde, which, on a good day should be a sure thing, is now cause for worry.
Some of Nigeria’s best footballers have been gathered, and even recalled from retirement, for the purpose of reaching the playoffs and they are hungry to star in the world stage at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar but if the technical capacity is lacking and the tactical wherewithal is absent, it will be an unforgettable story that Cape Verde will benefit from.
And that will be a definitive end to the story of Gernot Rohr in the Nigerian Super Eagles’ dugout. The teams will meet at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos by 5 pm local time.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
