Former Super Eagles winger Tijani Babangida has blamed Gernot Rohr for the national team’s poor form after ending the 2020 calendar year without a win.
Babangida made this known during an interview on Friday.
The Eagles drew 4-4 against Sierra Leone in Benin City and 0-0 in Freetown in their final games of 2020, and thus failed to clinch an early ticket for the Africa Cup of Nations scheduled for Cameroon in 2021.
Former Ajax winger Babangida blamed Rohr for the national team’s woes.
“The coach of the Eagles is the one to be blamed for the poor form of the team. He is the one in charge of the team and one thing I know he has deviated from is that he has not followed the football culture of Nigeria’s national team,” Babangida said.
“We used wingers during our time with the team, but looking at the Eagles today, wingers are not really prominent because the players play to the coaches’ instructions. So, when they do not perform well, then the whole fault is that of the coach because they are only doing what he asked them to do.”
The Atlanta ’96 gold medal insisted that the Franco-German coach should inject some Nigeria Professional Football League players into the national team, saying it will help them garner experience to play at continental and global competitions.
“First of all, the NFF must come up with a programme where they can assemble home-based players for three weeks before the players go back to their clubs. From there, you can have more players and add 11 or so from Europe because those abroad can only train for one or two days when they come for matches. Then when we were here, that was what was done.
“It helps in having a solid team on ground, while those from outside the countries add up to the strength of the team. This will create opportunities for the home-based players too to play for the team.
“This is the programmme that should be done and I believe this is what Augustine Eguavoen (NFF Technical Director) should do.”
