Super Eagles’ coach, Gernot Rohr is picking positives from his side’s goalless draw with Sierra Leone in the second leg of their Africa Cup of Nations double-qualifier, as the Franco-German tactician noted that it was a welcome development to avoid conceding in the encounter, megasportsarena.com reports.
Although many Nigerian football fans and journalist were aghast that the Eagles could not atone for the 4-4 draw they suffered during the first leg in Benin City last Friday, when they gave up a four-goal lead against their visitors, Rohr insisted that keeping a clean sheet away from was no mean feat.
Indeed, the Eagles would have snatched all three points had the referee not ruled out for offside Leicester City of England striker, Kelechi Iheanacho’s header that went into the opponent’s goal in the 62nd minute.
He went on to praise his lad’s battling abilities on a poor pitch at Siaka Stephens Stadium in Freetown, where he reckoned that the tough conditions could have overwhelmed any player, but was glad that everyone in his squad fought to the last whistle.
However, while also lamenting the absence of Victor Osimhen for Tuesday’s away fixture, Rohr parried any critical view on whether the ref made the right call and chose to praise his players for working hard to earn a share of the spoils.
Rohr expatiated: “I don’t know if the goal was offside or not, but we tried, we tried to play well on this difficult pitch and congrats to the players.
“They showed that they can fight together and play a goalless draw away. It’s a long, long time that we had a goalless defence and we wanted to be solid after what happened in the second half the other day.
“I am especially very happy for our goalkeeper who showed to everybody that he is a good one. We have a young team, it was a shock the other day after the injury to Victor Osimhen, everybody was afraid, and today they wanted to fight for him, they did it, they fought very well.
“It’s not official but we are very close now to qualification, we also saw the result of Benin who played a draw in Lesotho. All the games are difficult, there are no little opponents, everybody is well organized, today on this difficult pitch we tried to play football.”
