Sack NFF leadership now, Orji Kalu tells FG

• Sports analysts blame Pinnick, Sports Minister over Gernot Rohr’s removal

Former Abia State Governor, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, wants the Federal Government to sack the leadership of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) over Super Eagles’ failure to qualify for Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Kalu, a foremost football lover, spoke shortly after the Super Eagles were eliminated by the Black Stars of Ghana in Tuesday’s second leg of the World Cup qualifiers in Abuja.

“What a sad night for all soccer lovers,” an angry Kalu said. “It is high time the entire management of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) is overhauled. In the past five years, we have exercised patience with incompetence, for a big team that should ordinarily be the best, not just in Africa, but the world. The reality is that football is the same with science courses like Medicine and Engineering, where you can’t cut corners, otherwise, you produce quack and incompetent people.

“The Federal Government and Nigerians have supported the NFF beyond measures, and since they can’t give us the needed result, they should be sacked for a better and more tactical management,” Kalu stated.

MEANWHILE, some football analysts have put the blame of Super Eagles failure to qualify for the World Cup on the shoulders of Sports Minister, Sunday Dare, and NFF President Amaju Pinnick. They accused the duo of mounting ‘unnecessary campaign’ against former coach, Gernot Rohr.

To some of the analysts, who voiced their anger while speaking on sports radio programmes monitored in Lagos yesterday, performance by the Super Eagles under an indigenous coach at the last AFCON tournament in Cameroun and the World Cup playoff against Ghana shows clearly that there was no justifiable reason for sacking Rohr.

“Emotions got the better of us because sacking Rohr at that time after a successful Nations Cup and World Cup qualifying campaign was a suicide many didn’t see,” one of the analysts, Justin, said.

Another analyst, Oseni said: “Some of us warned on the madness of hounding Gernot Rohr and promoting home-based coaches. Some Nigerians, who don’t know much about football tactics, said the Super Eagles under Rohr were not playing entertaining football. Now, we have seen entertainment football from our indigenous coaches. Total rubbish.”