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By Amaechi Agbo

Former Super Eagles attacker, Julius Aghahowa has stated that the performance of Gernot Rohr as Super Eagles coach for the past five years does not impress him.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with www.bestchoisports.com.ng in Abuja, Aghahowa said that with the arrays of talented stars at his disposal, Rohr has not measured up to expectations with the team

“It is a tough question to answer because I don’t want to be negative,” the ex Fenerbahce man started when asked for his views on the German’s stewardship since 2016

“But if I want to summarize his years here in a nutshell, I will say I am not really impressed with the general performance of the coach because with the talents we have and the young players coming through the ranks, I believe we could have done better than what we are doing at the moment,” he said

He called for inclusion of home-based players in the team to harness and build a formidable team for the country.

“We need to harness more of the talents that we have, we need to go to the clubs, have more Nigerian league players into the team even if it two, three; we need to put them in the team.”

He compared Rohr’s days with that of Clemens Westerhof who he said that the latter was always on ground during his time as the Super Eagles coach, watched local league matches, followed up on players he discovered and blended them with the foreign ones who played outside the country.

“I remember the time of (Clemens) Westerhof, he would be on ground; he practically was living here, to know the players intoto, where they play and be involved. He has not been doing that, he is just relying on the foreign players.

“And you know the foreign players when it comes to Africa, it will be very very difficult for them. We need a blend the home-based and the foreign players so that there will be competitions.

“It is tougher here when you are going to play Cape Verde, Congo or all those difficult terrains, we need our players here who can go there. We play the champions league (CAF) so the players are aware of those things but when you come from Europe, because of the nature of how they train there, they will not be able to cope.

“That is why when we go outside it is difficult for us to get results. We need to have tough players or we need to toughen these players so that they can be ready for African terrain,” he said.

Super Eagles of Nigeria on Tuesday qualified for the play-off final round of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar but many have called for his sack following underwhelming performances recently including a 1-1 home draw against Cape Verde in the final group match in Lagos on Tuesday last week.