Adeyinka Akintunde
SUPER Eagles chief coach Gernot Rohr spent most of his spare time wishing recuperating goalkeeper Francis Uzoho a speedy recovery from a successful ankle surgery last week in Spain, stressing that there are plans to visit him in the hospital.
In an interviewed monitored by SPORTINGLIFE in Lagos, Rohr said: ”I sent him a personal message on Whatsapp. Since it is personal, it is not for the media, but you can imagine what I sent to him. I just let him know that the NFF family is wishing him all the best, he is not alone. We can go and see him in Spain, like we did with Carl Ikeme. We never forget our injured players or our players with health problems. We did our best to get him good doctors, moving him from Cyprus to Spain , he got a good hospital and I hope he can rehabilitate and start again very soon.
How do you feel about the good start to AFCON 2021 Qualifiers?
We are happy about it, we are proud of our team because of our performance. This week was not easy, we gave a good result but we had a short time for preparations and a long time to travel and the players had one week to do these two games. There was a lot of effort but we are finally happy with the result.
What positives did you pick from the games and which areas will you want to improve on?
We all the time want to improve so we cannot say all is wonderful. In each matches there are some mistakes, even if we win, and we don’t forget them. We analyse the mistakes, the goals we conceded, we have. We have assistants who work on the videos of our past matches and in our next meeting, we speak about our mistakes, and show the players the videos of their past mistakes.
But there were more good things than bad things. We conceded three goals and that is a little too much. We are working on our mistakes. That is how we hav been working for the past three years. We don’t just win and move on, we look at our past mistakes.
You must be impressed with the team’s fighting spirit fighting back from a goal down to win both games
Not so much of a fighting spirit. I think it is at first, the mmental stregth to concede a goal and stay in the match, without panicking. You continue to play your football, that is the first thing. We play our football. If you want to play, you must win the duel, and this requires motivation. Sometimes we score the first goal of the match, like we did against Tunisia, Ukraine and Brazil, but we won only one out of the three, now we conceded first, and we eventually won, which is a good example for mental reaction and strength.
What plans are on your mind right now before your next assignment, which is the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, in March 2020?
Yes, the match will come quickly, so we have to do a list in February. We have to follow our players and see what they are doing, we have to take some news on our injured goalkeeper, Francis Uzoho, who has been successfully operated last week, we have to work on some departments in our team, and like we do always, we will scout our players, watch games, meet some players especially those playing outside, who are eligible to play for Nigeria. We all the time try to improve our team.
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