By Francis Ajuonuma
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) yesterday gave more light to why the German tactician was relieved of his job.
According to NFF President, Amaju Pinnick who spoke on the TVC sports program, Rohr was sacked to avert disaster awaiting to hit the national team in terms of performance due to indiscipline that has found its way into the team’s dressing room.
Pinnick, who explained that the decision to sack Rohr was collectively taken by members of the football committee as several factors were put into consideration, denied speculation that lack of motivation resulting from poor welfare played no role in the decision to fire the former Gabon Coach.
“It wasn’t an individual decision; it was a collective decision by the entire football committee.
“We didn’t want a disaster to happen before taking the decision,” he said.
“We did everything for one major factor — that discipline in the team has practically been lost in the dressing room. Discipline in the team was at its lowest and once you remove discipline, that foundation on the team will be lost.
“Players will now turn back at you. Players will believe they are indispensable. A lot of factors that will now militate against the team.
“So, we need to change things because leadership is all about protecting whoever is working with you. We don’t want to go through all that, we had to take the bull by the horn before disaster starts happening. It was about to happen,” the NFF boss explained
When asked whether the NFF owed Rohr some unpaid salaries, Pinnick added: “We are only owing about two matches of all the matches they played in both AFCON qualifiers and World Cup qualifiers. For Gernot Rohr, I know we paid him for about five months. We were owing to him for a couple of months, then we cleared about five months.”
The Franco-German coach managed the first team for 64 months.
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In October, Pinnick had defended Rohr’s preference to work from abroad even though his contract mandated him to work in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, TNSports has gathered that the NFF could be forced to pay Rohr huge compensation of $2 million (approximately N822 million) for breach of contract.
In May 2020, Rohr signed a contract extension to keep him in charge of the Super Eagles until after the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar with the hefty payout clause.
The coach, who earned around $55,000 (N31,350,000) monthly, was paid partly by some of the NFF’s sponsors including Aieto Insurance and other prominent companies.
