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| Super Eagles German coach Gernot Rohr |
Nigeria Football Federation(NFF) President Amaju Pinnick has hinted that the federation was willing to offer Super Eagles German coach Gernot Rohr a fresh contract but with a caveat that stringent clauses would be inserted in order to help the cause of the national team ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 qualifiers.
Rohrโs contract as Super Eagles coach will elapse in June but Pinnick affirmed yesterday in Lagos that the NFF would table a new contract with the coach in January, adding everything would be conducted in the best interest of Nigerian football.
โSincerely, we want him to continue with his work and we have said that we are going to sit down with the coach in January with the possibility of offering him a new contract,โ explained Pinnick.
Contracted in 2016 on a two-year deal, Rohr was offered another two-year contract after guiding the country to the World Cup finals in Russia.
โThe truth is that we were carried with the euphoria of World Cup qualification and honestly, what he had can be regarded as a โrawโ contract,โ he continued.โ But we are going to have some stringent measures for overall best interest of the Super Eagles and Nigerian football.โ
According to Pinnick, some of the clauses being looked in the new contract would see Rohr take permanent residence in the country with a choice of living either in Lagos or Abuja and the German will be allowed to travel on vacation only three times in a year.
It was also understood that the coach would henceforth work in conjunction with the NFFโs technical committee in order to ensure the best interest of the team.
โOf course, the coach will have to work more with the technical committee and this is just in a bid for checks and balancing,โ he said.
…Rallies support for Eagles
The race towards qualification for FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 would not be for the faint hearted hence Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President Amaju Pinnick has called on Nigerians to rally behind the Super Eagles.
The continental soccer ruling body, CAF, had reverted to the format used for the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification competition after an initial proposal to merge the qualification rounds for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations with those for the World Cup was turned down at its meeting in June 2018.
The Super Eagles have already drawn bye into the second round that will see the top 26 ranked CAF teams joined by the 14 winners from the first round.
The draw for the second round will be held on 21 January at the Nile Ritz-Carlton in Cairo, Egypt and the 40 teams will be drawn into ten groups of four teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches with the winners of each group advancing to the third round-where the second round group winners will play home-and-away over two legs. The five winners qualify for the World Cup.
Meanwhile, Pinnick said the NFF would in January move into its headquarter building located inside the package B of the MKO Stadium in Abuja.
The building, named after erstwhile chairman of the then NFA, Sunday Dankaro was commissioned in 2013 and handed over to the NFF by former Vice-President Namadi Sambo.
