BEN MEMULETIWON
After his rain of abuses on Nigerian sports journalists calling them beggars and players’ agents, Super Eagles coach Gernot Rohr has again hit the media. This time he is accusing them of working against the team’s success in the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Russia.
The coach is reported to have petitioned FIFA to complain about the Nigerian reporter attached to the Super Eagles by the world football ruling body. The German coach said the reporter, Samm Audu is behind the leakage of information from the camp to the press. This development has prompted FIFA to replace the Nigerian with a German female reporter, Annette Braun, immediately.
Report from Russia revealed that the coach is paranoid about the 0-2 defeat to Croatia blaming Audu for leaking his team list to the public days before the match. According to him, the leakage helped the Croatians to marshall master plans against Eagles.
Rohr’s war against the Nigerian media started when he granted an interview to a German newspaper recently accusing Nigerian journalists of not being properly schooled on the job. He accused them of trying to impose players on him angling that most of them are players’ agents.
Again, the journalists are receiving the butt from the German making them scapegoats for his sides poor performance against Croatia. And the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has backed him to make Audu a scapegoat by declaring him a persona non grata.
Report from the Eagles camp affirms the development adding that the players demanded for Audu’s sack on the grounds that they are not happy with him.
But football analysts are miffed that the coach is merely looking for a scapegoat on which to hang his failure, like that poor farmer who blames his farm implement for poor job output.
“This is a sad development,” says Miebi Senge an analyst. “So sad that our NFF is condoning a man who has already run out of fresh ideas. A man who has lost four times applying same strategy. He has run out of new ideas.
“Barring Samm Audu won’t make the Super Eagles win, just as his earlier unguarded publication didn’t stop the team from playing aimlessly against Croatia.
“Its up to the NFF to ring its employee to give us (fans) good results.
“Yes, journalists should go about their jobs with decorum and high values. Still, its up to Coach Gernot Rohr, if he is what he claims to be flexible enough to have taken his opponents by surprise. He could’ve rejigged his team overnight seeing that one Nigerian FIFA Reporter had leaked his closely guarded secret.”
