Onigbinde warns Rohr ahead Russia 2018

 

Former Super Eagles coach, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde has said that the players must be well equipped for Nigeria to scale through to the second round of the 2018 World Cup.

Nigeria are to battle with Argentina, Croatia and Iceland in group D at Russia 2018 for the available second round spots.

Onigbinde who spoke during the Sports Media Ambassadors Award held on Tuesday at the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium, Ibadan, said the Eagles handler (Gernot Rohr) should concentrate more on the physical conditioning of his players and tactics than think more of the pedigree of the team’s opponents in Russia.

“The coach {Rohr} must look into the intellectual capacity of the players, psychological fitness, medical fitness, physiological fitness, technical fitness, tactical fitness before thinking about our opponents.

“Football is a game of ball possession, maintain the possession of the ball, denied your opponents of the ball possession that is finish because as good as Pele was, it was only in the possession of the ball that he would perform his magic or Lionel Messi or whoever,” Onigbinde begins.

“If you can device tactics that would prevent your opponents from intercepting the ball, the opponents are finished and I am sure will all modesty, I have demonstrated this through the teams I handled on several occasions.

“My team to the 2002 World Cup was raised within three months, in football when you talk of a season, what is the duration of a season in football? It is the period of one competition and rest, so the duration of the World Cup is four years, every country has four years to prepare and I had less than three months to prepare a World Cup team. We did whatever we could, so I’m not giving excuses but anything could have happened.”

The former handler of Trinidad and Tobago noted that the Eagles must think of other group opponent’s aside Argentina.

“So, Argentina there or not, I nursed fears after we beat Argentina last month 4-2 in a friendly in Russia. I said Nigeria will be in trouble, because we will be thinking that since we beat Argentina lately, we will beat them again at the World Cup. Football is no mathematics, I mean statistics don’t play matches in football, that you beat me 4-0 yesterday does not mean you will beat me when we meet again.

“I just hope our people will be aware of this and they will take caution because at the end of the day, what the handlers of the team are able to inject into the team matters a lot,” the man who coached Nigeria to the 2002 World Cup said.