Super Eagles Coach, Gernot Rohr has expressed satisfaction with his team’s performance in the wake of Tuesday’s 1-1 draw against Cape Verde, but pointed to a defensive deficiency that needs to be addressed ahead of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations and World Cup qualification playoffs.
Nigeria qualified for the final round of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers after securing an important point against the Blue Sharks at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.
“Sometimes a draw can be like a victory, we wanted to qualify and we knew that a draw is already qualification,” Rohr told reporters.
The Franco-German also highlighted the Super Eagles’ inability to score a second goal with several chances missed in the opening forty five minutes.
“It was not an easy game because Cape Verde has a very good technical team, and they scored a goal in the moment when we believed that we had the match in the hand but we missed a lot of chances in the first half especially.
“I think that we deserved to score a second goal, second goal was not coming so we had to defend this draw and the players did it very well.
“The improvement I want to see is to exploit the opportunities we have to score, to be more effective offensively, that’s what I want to see, and also to play quicker from behind, it is still too slow from behind for me.
“I want to have a quicker football with one, two touches. Coming from behind our central defenders still take much time to bring the balls forward,” he said.
Nigeria topped Group C with 13 points ahead of nearest challengers Cape Verde, who finished on eleven points.
The three-time African champions are one of the top seeded teams based on the current FIFA ranking and would learn their opponents come December 18 when draws for the play-off would be announced.
