The President, Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), Amaju Pinnick, has said that Super Eagles coach Gernot Rohr was sacked to forestall a “disaster” waiting to happen.
“It wasn’t an individual decision; it was a collective decision from the committee,” Pinnick said on Monday when he featured as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily breakfast programme.
“We didn’t want a disaster to happen before taking the decision,” he added.
Pinnick said the last two games under Rohr were abysmal and Nigeria won’t have qualified for the last round of the World Cup if not for providence.
The NFF President also said the 68-year-old coach failed to enforce discipline in the team, adding that there were so many things not known to the public on the matter.
“We did everything that we could, but one major factor was that discipline in the team is lost practically. In the dressing room, discipline in the team was at its lowest ebb and once you remove discipline, that foundation in the team has cracked.
“Players now talk back at you, players believe that they are indispensable. A lot of factors that will now militate against the team. We are only owing about two matches of all the matches they played in both AFCON qualifiers and World Cup qualifiers,” the NFF boss added.
Pinnick added that the football federation still owed Rohr some unpaid salaries but promised that they would be cleared off in months.
The NFF had terminated Rohr’s contract as the Super Eagles coach on Sunday after months of fireworks between the federation and the Franco-German coach who managed the first team for the past 64 months.
In his place, the football federation appointed Augustine Eguavoen, currently its Technical Director, as the Technical Adviser of the Super Eagles on an interim basis.
Before his sacking, Rohr had demanded that the NFF paid him his outstanding salaries of two months and an additional four months pay before he quit the team.
