Youth and Sports Development Minister Sunday Dare is hopeful the Super Eagles can do well in Cameroon and possibly win their fourth (4th) Africa Cup of Nations title next year.
Nigeria finished in third (3rd) place at the last edition of the tournament in Egypt two years ago and the Minister believes they can go two notches higher when next year’s event gets underway in January 2022.
“I have created the mental picture of this golden(AFCON) trophy in my head and I will use it as a prayer point every morning,” Dare told journalists and officials of TotalEnergies, AFCON sponsors, at the press conference to herald the three day trophy tour of Lagos, Nigeria on Monday.
The Minister said Nigeria is the country with the most podium finishes in the history of the competition, winning a medal fifteen(15) times out of eighteen(18) appearances.
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The Super Eagles have won the tournament thrice, finished as runners up (silver medalists) four times and won bronze eight (8) times.
Dare also insisted that the local content of Nigerian football needs to improve if the country wants to compete favourably at the global stage.
His words: “We have to do more for the local ecosystem of our game. We have to be deliberate with talent discovery, nurturing of the talents discovered and managing them to get to the top of the ladder in their careers and stay there till they retire.
“We have countless examples of how we got this system working in the past. We must do it again. There must be consistent focus on the grassroots, school sports, provision of facilities, equipment and training gears. Competitions organized will also toughen and sharpen the talents.
“Look at Henry Nwosu, the sixteen year old school boy that made the Green Eagles squad to the 1980 AFCON.
“Look also at ‘chairman’ Christian Chukwu, Kadiri Ikhana who became accomplished coaches after their 1980 exploits.
“We can also speak about Stephen Keshi(of blessed memory) and what he achieved as a coach and a player, others like Austin Eguavoen, Samson Siasia and Sunday Oliseh have all coached the Super Eagles and made their marks on the game.
“Clearly we have enough talents here, we just need to put in the hardwork to discover them.
“Let our former football stars and sports icons who have done Nigeria proud and who understand the DNA of Nigerian football be given the opportunity to help build a team. From the history of Nigeria’s performance at the AFCON, we have seen the impactful roles of indigenous handlers and former stars.”
The Sports Minister then commended the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for organizing a competition for schools sponsored by the foundation of the CAF president Dr Patrice Motsepe, while congratulating them for the successful organization of the just concluded CAF Champions League competition for women football clubs.
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COMMENTS
Ogaa Minister o, leave God outta this. Rohr won bronze last time and needs encouragement.
Hmmm! Is salish Yusuf not a local content? We need officials with thinking caps 0n. TO me sha, we should continue with coach Rohr at least for now.
Thank You. Correct thinker.
Coach Yusuf, keeper handler, Agu should be sent on refresher course to better assist coach Rohr. That’s the best way to go. Hopefully later on, Rohr will hand them the team.
jokers, how you think you even gonna qualify,sacked a coach just nearly weeks to the nations cup/World Cup. yeye, you guys will now make Akpeyi number 1, yeye country.
It appears many have not woken up from their dream , that we should be thinking post clueless Rohr’s directionless 6 years running wasted era by now . Having phoney believe that a vibrant and knowledgeable hon minister of sports as Dare Sunday would be a part of this scam mechanic Rohr that has never won a tea cup in his entire coaching career is a day dreaming.
Many are still suffering from inferiority complex of anything white is better even if it is a quack scam Mechanic that called himself coach as Oga Rohr , whose 6 years running as the longest serving coach of SE has been nothing but total waste :
No pattern of play for 6 years running;
No reliable N01 goalkeeper for 6 years running;
I challenge Rohr’s let over blinds supporter to name players in the following SE tradition wings position which is the strongest points of Nigerian prowess and where SE excels as samba is the tradition style of Brazil :
They should name just one player that is currently SE outside right position ( N07) as we had Segun Odegbami , Finidi , Babangida , Dimeji Lawal , Victor Moses etc
Name of player playing outside left wing ( N011) as we have Edeboh, Elahoh, Ikpeba, Opabunmi, Garba Lawal, Felix Owolabi etc ;
Name creative midfielder as we had Mikel , Okocha, Nwosu , Friday Ekpo, Etimi Essien etc ;
Name of the free kick designated players as in Okocha, Sunday Oliseh, Ohenhen, Taye Taiwo , and what year have SE scored free kick last in the 6 years unending scam team building ?
Rohr a.k.a Belmadi’s trainee that ought to have been prosecuted for scamming 200 million Nigerians collecting underserved money being shared with his business partner NFF.
Thank God Sports Minister Dare Sunday is not daft and corrupt one that Rohr in conspiracy with his business partner NFF can fool till eternity.
Rohr played against 3 tiny teams in WC qualifying of which 2 of the countries did not have just one ☝️ stadium in their country and played all their home matches in another country; yet Rohr directionless team laboured to qualify by whisker , with one of the team that did not have a single stadium in their county beaten us at home . These are the team that there highest ranked ever was never closed to the lowest FIFA ranking of SE ; now what could have happened, if one single ranked within 10th position in Africa like South Africa, Egypt , Algeria were to be in our wc qualifying group ( your guess is as good as mine , we would have been looking forward for preparation for 2026 WC qualifying games).
Now that , it is so certain that if Rohr were to continue , SE can never qualify for WC as Rohr team has never beaten and ranked team under 10 position in Africa since 2020 till date , some are still dreaming Rohr should be left until he bury SE completely beyond redemption before Rohr is sent back to his country to go and scam his home country U15 if they would allowed him near their bench .
What is special with Afcon, would Rohr that has never won a tea in his coaching career would have performed magic to win Afcon , in the same team that his lecturer Algerian local coach Belmadi is also participating?
Lamapard was sacked in the crucial stage of UEFA & Premiership just this concluded season and his emergency replacement Tuchel did not only finished Premier league in photo-finish runner up , but won the highest result in the bigger UEFA !!!
In the last qualifying match of Bonfere Jo WC qualifying match 2002 , sensing that Bonfere Jo team has come to its wits end , he was sacked some days to the most crucial away match that SE needed outright win with high goal margin against the group leader Sudan at home in their sandy stadium ; Amodu of blessed memory along with his determined SE team did not have any excuse of sandy stadium as Rohr and his blinds left over supporters would always played blame game of stadium ; the rest was history, as a Local coach Amodu audaciously beat Sudan on their sandy pitch with the 4 goals to nil !!
But for corruption, should Rohr have allowed to handle CHAN Eagles let alone setting a record of longest serving SE coach where invitation to SE is now anything goes a retired flopped Igahalo commanding a starting shirt and retiring Musa still regular and a goalkeeper John Noble that has not been active for the past 6 months given a kingship call up treatment ahead of a better goalkeeper that benched him permanently in the same Eyimba cup.
Now that Osimeh is injured and is almost certain, he may not be fit on time to play in Afcon; if the dumbo mechanic Rohr were to take the team to Afcon, the result need no oracle to check , Rohr would have embarrassed us with first ever first round elimination and trust he will blame his failure as usual on the absence of Osimeh, and of course, WC qualifier will be certain no go area.
The quack mechanic alias Coach Rohr has nothing to offer , and it is gone for good ; no progressive minds or right thinking minds would want us to continue in the disastrous unending 6 years journey of clueless Rohr ; it is high time , we save ourselves from White complexity of anything white colour is the best , even when it is confirmed quack and scam .
Current Afcon holder Belmadi of Algeria is a local coach and still ranked higher than SE; same also the highest FIFA ranked African team is Senegal and it is coached by their local coach ;
Why should we continue to waste our resources on a scammer as coach if we cannot employ first class coach , let us swim or die with our own local coach like Amunike, Egbo , Finidi etc with steady salary .
It should be interesting that in 2013 when our local coach Keshi qualified for Afcon and won the cup , it is interesting to know that the same clueless that was overpackaged to scam and fooled 200 million Nigerians Rohr was disastrous failure in the same Afcon tournament year that late Keshi won the highest price afcon .
Enough of dumbo Rohr , never again would we have a scam mechanic taken us for a ride again ; Rohr is a waste and has become past tense
Making a case for Rohr is because he has been meeting targets. In the last AFCON, he given a target of 3rd place, he won bronze. In the current dispensation he has achieved so far. Some 0f the reasons why many Nigerians refused to wake up to the distractions and disharmony being caused by the pisition of a few Nigerians. The truth is unless the stakeholders are planning to fail, you don’t change a successful team.
It is too close already unless you people are planning to be ousted in group stage. Kindly allow these set of Eagles to continue from where they stopped. Minister sir, don’t be compelled to taking decisions in a hurry, and know ye, some people even want you to make error in judgement. Leave Rohr to complete the assignment biko nu.
You said it all
The minister is indirectly saying that they should give the SuperEagles job to a local coach. 2 out of the 3 AFCONS were won by foreign coaches. 3 out of the 4 finalists were foreign coaches. 5 out of the 8 bronzes were won by foreign coaches. So please stop with this local coaches crap. SuperEagles is way too big for them to handle. Let them work with the age grade teams and discover talents. They can discover talents, but can never manage them. If the NFF made a mistake of handling over this team to a local coach shebi na HBP most fans dey complain about?? What will follow KONI ṢE FẸNUSỌ.
I don’t know why they removed the up vote button. So i can up-vote you many times (if its possible).
People are being used to beat evil drums to oust an imperfect, matured man, doing a reasonable (if unspectacular) job, in a difficult environment. All for the pockets of a few. Exact same nonsense that happened with Trousier and Amodu (twice). In the end the country’s football was the worst for it.
They want to give the Eagles job to a local coach, or bring in someone who’s never done the job in this terrain in the past.
Nigerians never learn.
There must be a gradual transition otherwise any change away from Rohr can only amount to one thing, doom. Yusuf and Agu should be properly trained to take over, maybe in a year’s time.
Even the local coach that successfully won the AFCON Keshi of blessed memories had worked under Westerhoff as the team captain an Era where he was more like a player coach because he never really played a lot of games for Nigeria under Westerhoff. He worked with Bonfere and then Amodu. Led both Togo and Mali to the AFCON where they crashed out in the group stages. By the time he took over the SuperEagles he has already had the knowledge of African football. Even at that, initial results weren’t really encouraging except for the 6-1 drubbing of Liberia in Calabar that qualified us for the AFCON. He was going to be fired at the AFCON after 1-1 draws in the first two games against Burkina and Zambia. It was the intervention of the then sports minister Mobolaji Abdulhahi who to me is Nigeria’s last great sports minister that saved his job in South Africa and the rest was history. Since Bolaji Abdulhahi never has not been lucky with sports ministers.
Nigeria is not Tanzania.
Amunike for the Job!!!
Even if Amunike will happen, it will be after Afcon. As a matter of fact, those EPL big boys will never respect him. Infact, that will be the biggest mistake. Our best bet still remains Rohr with his present local content crew. Where is Jay Jay Okocha?
R.I.P. Super Eagles!!!
https://scorenigeria.com.ng/salisu-yusuf-to-take-temporary-charge-of-super-eagles/
We started digging our graves right from Rohr’s contract negotiations, putting limiting conditions and forcing Lagos stadium on the team.
Salisu and Rohr is just like 5 and 6.
Ha ha ha ha, laughing last. Hope we haven’t shot our feet. Ha ha ha
Yusuf, tor.
And one of the 15 medals u boast about was won by the coach u are bent on sacking. Exclude his achievements for country so that we shall know he has done nothing over the past five years. The truth always pops its head whenever they speak.
It is not too late. Bring in Egbo now. He is the most qualified Nigerian coach to date. He is coaching their premier league team in Albanian at the moment. He is far superior to ye ye Rohr. As a Nigerian born coach, he may be willing to accept 75% of what is being paid to the present ye ye coach. Egbo was born in Owerri and played for Ranger of Enugu with 16 Caps for Nigeria. He is smart and speaks many European & Nigerian languages.
They should give the job to Eguavoen and Aigbogun they would deliver Dare, Dare dare don’t toy with Nigerians
It will be disastrous to bring corrupt Salisu to handle SE , because Salisu & Rohr are same clueless 5& 6 and corrupt men that can afford to work till eternity without salary ; there is no differences between them. Except the corrupt NFF want to completely bury SE from where Rohr destroyed it in his 6years directionless never end scam rebuilding and then make case for foreign mediocre mechanic like Rohr a.k.a Belmadi’s trainee whom they can do business with; NFF must go for quality and technical competent local coaches like Amunike, Egbo , Finidi etc , not a quack.
@ Ayphillydegreat; Thank you for reminding us that out of 3 Afcon won by SE , 2 were won by foreign coaches with all the money invested on foreign coaches ; a sensible nation that is not backward in thinking and not administered by the corrupt football federations as our NFF should have known the best thing is to channel the investment on her own indigenous coaches who won one Afcon from the 2 Afcon with the winner of one Afcon Keshi did it with backlogs of unpaid salary unlike the only 2 foreign winners father Tikko and Westerhof who were never owed 1 day salary,also with fantastic condition of services.
A sensible but not senile country should have either swim or sink with it’s own indigenous coaches as done by Algeria whose team couldn’t qualify for previous Afcon , but was vindicated with their local coach that was given good salary and good condition of services went on not only to win Afcon but also ended up tutoring our mechanic Alias Coach Rohr , the basics coaching skills not only once but 3 years after just to embarrass our corrupt country cum NFF that 3 years after Rohr never improved and rather his journey was a waste ;
The FIFA highest ranking National team in Africa today is the same country that decided to stop mediocre foreign coaches as mechanic Rohr ( Senegal ) , with current Afcon champion Algeria not only Afcon holder but also ranked higher than Rohr’s 6 years built team.
@ Oakfield; Please , stop insulting the sensibility of Nigerians just to labour in vain to advertise your scam product Rohr a.k.a Belmadi’s trainee; who is celebrating Rohr’s shameful bronze medal as achievement? We only celebrated Keshi of blessed memory because of winning Afcon , when no one celebrated Chief Onigbinde that won a sliver with entire new team with only Muda Lawal only recalled player ; yet no body celebrated him , unlike the celebration of fraud by NFF who had to increase Rohr’s salary % while for winning shameful 3rd place match , having been bundled out by Algeria local coach Belmadi; while the local coach Keshi that won ultimate highest cup with backlog of unpaid salary , surpassing set target , was frustrated with unpaid salary rather than increasing his salary. If you are in doubt , have you ever read in this platform where members celebrated local coaches that have won bronze in the past ? I don’t even know their names let alone celebrating them .
We only celebrated Siasia because of winning U20 and Olympic Sliver , all this were done with self sponsored team with unpaid salary and in a competitions where Argentina Messi was then a phenomenon.
Rohr is a scam, and I repeat Hon monster of sports Dare Sunday would not be as daft and corrupt as this fraudulent NFF to give one day extra for the scam Mechanic that called himself Coach ( Rohr a.k.a Belmadi) .
It is never too late to bring new coach , what is the essence of participating in Afcon that we know Rohr team can’t compete successfully with baba 70 years old minus 2 that has never won tea cup in his entire coaching career ( Name a football coach in the world that set such record of winning at age 69 of what he cannot achieve in his 50s ) .
Rohr has become Egypt, would never go back again to be scammed by a mechanic
Thank you for bringing up the issue of salary payments. Maybe he was handicapped with blindness, deafening of the ear when this same NFF frustrated keshi. Maybe the scammer can tell us why indigenous coaches are being owed there salaries, most of the foreigners that worked in the national team, were never owed. and when the local ones speak up, you give them the boot. what double standard