Rohr has improved Eagles —Mikel

Super Eagles captain, John Mikel Obi says much has changed with the Nigeria national team since Gernot Rohr replaced Sunday Oliseh as the head of coaching duties.

The Chelsea midfielder says the team now plays with ‘energy’ with the young players ‘always calling for the ball’.

He reckons these and other factors will propel the Super Eagles to victory in today’s 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifier against Algeria.

“We have a very good and young team. The manager [Gernot Rohr] has come in and he has made a lot of changes to the team.

“He has brought in a lot of new players and I think it is quite clear to see from the way we play these days.

“There’s a lot more energy to our game and players like Kelechi [Iheanacho], [Alex] Iwobi and the others are always calling for the ball because we generally want to express ourselves a lot more.

“That is something we have improved on lately,” Mikel said at a press conference in Uyo on Friday.

Mikel also revealed that Rohr consistently insists that the players win back possession as soon as possible whenever the team loses the ball.

He said the tactic will remain unchanged when they face the dangerous Algerians today.

“One thing the manager always likes us to do is to win back possession quickly whenever we lose the ball.

“What this translates into is that we always have possession of the ball.

“We have done that very well in the last two games [versus Tanzania and Zambia] we have played and hopefully, against Algeria on Saturday, we will carry it over from the Zambia game and play a good game,” he said.

Saturday’s game at the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium, Uyo will kick off at 4pm.