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The duo of Everton star Alex Iwobi and Leicester City midfielder Wilfred Ndidi was replaced in the squad by Taiwo Awoniyi and Frank Onyeka due to injuries and the German tactician has blamed the country’s first World Cup qualifiers home loss in 40 years on their absence. Rohr said:
“We missed the creativity of (Alex) Iwobi, we also missed Ndidi (Wilfred) so much…It was not easy for (Frank) Onyeka and first-timer (Taiwo) Awoniyi to come to this team. We have to recover, and we have to make some changes in the team.”
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The German who has been in charge of the team since 2016 revealed that the players are disappointed with the result and are still trying to figure out why they lost in front of the Lagos crowd on Thursday.
“The players are still disappointed in the dressing room and still can’t understand why we could lose this match. We dominated possession of the ball, we had several opportunities to score, but we did not score and very often in football, there was a counter and our opponents scored.” Gernot RohrFollowing the result, Nigeria now tops the Group C table with just two points ahead of Cape Verde (4 points) who beat Liberia 2-1 to register their first win of the qualifiers. The Central African Republic sits third on the table with four points after their win against the Eagles and will be looking to capitalize when Nigeria travels to Douala for Sunday’s (October 10) second-leg encounter against the Central Africans. Source Complete Sports Featured Image Source: Soccernet NG
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