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Rohr’s new deal is good news for home-based players, says Eguma

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Rivers United Coach, Stanley Eguma, believes home-based players will now be given the chance to be part of the Super Eagles following the new contract signed by Coach Gernot Rohr.

The deal has a clause that compels Rohr to monitor the domestic league for players.

Speaking to The Guardian yesterday, Eguma said he would excuse Rohr for not considering the Nigeria Professional Football Players (NPFL) players in the first and the second deals he signed with the NFF because the clause of developing the home-based players was not included in the contract.

“To me, I think the onus is with the NFF, which has an agreement with Rohr. As a coach, I think whatever you sign should be implemented to the fullest. If from the onset Rohr was given the mandate to include the domestic league players in the national team, it’s compulsory he does that. But that wasn’t the case.

“In the new clause where he has now been told to look for good players from the NPFL, I think Rohr should look out for the players and fix them into the team. Even if they don’t meet the standard, he should make them get to the standard he wants.

“Also, if the clause of watching the NPFL fixtures for players good enough for the Super Eagles had been included in the previous deals, there won’t be any friction of why NPFL players always left out of Eagles in the first place. For me, I will not heap the blame more on Rohr but on NFF because the type of contract they signed with him,” he said, adding that things would be different now.

“We hope that this time he will scout for good players within and ensure that they are involved in the national team.

“Our league here must also be portrayed because if we don’t have our local players in the national team, then it means that our league is not improving,” he said.

Eguma argued that the fact that Rohr did not NPFL players earlier did not mean the overseas-based stars were all better than the ones playing in Nigeria.

“If a player like the 2013 Nations Cup winning star like Sunday Mba was not given the opportunity to part of the Eagles, he wouldn’t have been able to play in the national team and also got a contract abroad.

“He started here and blossomed in his career and we still have players as good as Mba in the league and even better. So, Rohr should look inward and ensure that these players are given the chance and we also want our league to grow,” he stated.

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