Football

My target is to qualify for semi-final stage-Coach Rohr

Published

7 years ago

July 16, 2019

Editor 1

Super Eagles head coach, Gernot Rohr has stressed that the Nigerian team have already met his own minimum target of qualifying for the semi-final stage of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations ongoing in Egypt, National Daily learnt.

Rohr pressmen that he knew that the Eagles’ current third place in the African rankings can only be maintained by at least qualifying for the last four of the competition.

The head coach noted that he had to make a few changes to ensure that he clipped the wings of the South Africans and that he was happy that one of his two newly introduced players emerged as the Man of the Match while then other played very well to cage the Bafana Bafana dangerman, Percy Tau.

“We have a very young team and we tried to play very good football,” Rohr told journalists.

ALSO READ: AFCON2019: Nigerians in South Africa urge the Eagles to defeat Algeria

“We are happy because it was in this wonderful stadium. We know that Egypt is a little bit sad and disappointed but I hope that we can give them good football to play and in a spectacular way.”

Rohr expressed caution regarding the feeling back home in Nigeria that the Eagles are now good for the title after they muscled their way into the last four.

“I hope so but we must win the semi-final first before dreaming of winning the cup. It will be a tough game either Algeria or Cote ‘d’ Ivoire.

“Our target was to go get to the semi-final stage because we are number three in Africa so we have to be in this position also to be on that level. But it was so difficult because the game was very close.

We are looking forward to the next game and are very happy about this victory. We can watch the game between Algeria and Cote d’Ivoire with relaxed minds.