Earlier this week, the NFF's technical and development committee recommended Mr Le Guen to the executive body as the man to be named as the Eagles head coach. He was to be paid a monthly salary of $40,000 a month with local coach Salisu Yusuf named as his assistant on a monthly wage of $5,000.
However, Mr Le Guen rejected the offer as the contract stipulated that he must live in Nigeria and must help contribute to the development of the game locally. He had wanted to live in France and only visit Nigeria ahead of matches where he could train with the team but the NFF found this unacceptable.
With the 2018 World Cup qualifiers coming up soon and Nigeria drawn in the group of death along with Cameroon, Algeria and Zambia, the NFF has had to act swiftly. NFF president Amaju Pinnick confirmed that Mr Rohr, who is currently working on development programmes for the German Football Federation, is expected to arrive in Nigeria today.
He is also expected to be in Lagos on Sunday where he would be at the stands to watch the league match between Ikorodu United and Sunshine Stars. After that, he will then be flown to Abuja on Monday where he will be introduced to NFF and sports ministry officials before being officially unveiled.
Mr Pinnick said: “We are just finalising the little details left. The work started quite a while ago but there was the need to wait until everything confirmed before making it public.
“The man is coming to live in Nigeria and work with our vision to develop Nigerian football. Qualifying for tournaments don’t really translate to proper development and so he is coming to stay here with his family and work with the federation and Nigerians.”
Among other things, Mr Rohr coached Bordeaux to the Uefa Cup final in 1996, where they lost to Bayern Munich over two legs. Bordeaux’s run to the final included a famous 3-0 win over AC Milan in the quarter-finals.
In addition, he was also the sports director of Eintracht Frankfurt from October 1998 until April 1999. Mr Rohr has also worked with Étoile Sportive du Sahel and FC Nantes and replaced French coach Alain Giresse as the coach of Gabon.
He managed Niger from September 2012 to 2014 before taking up a job with Burkina Faso. He was also short-listed for the Guinea national team job in July 2016 before the Nigerian offer came up.
Comments
Post a Comment