The invitation of Ahmed Musa to the Super Eagles of Nigeria for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Benin Republic and Lesotho sparked numerous reactions.
Various parties questioned Gernot Rohr’s decision to invite the Super Eagles captain due to his lack of club football for some months. Musa has been without a club since October 2020.
Gernot Rohr answered the critics then by describing his captain as the ’24th man’ in the 23-man team that were invited as he expected Musa to offer support and experience to the young talents coming through.
Rohr has explained that his decision to invite Musa for the previous games was due to the lack of wingers and further stated that Musa’s physical condition played a major role as he made a cameo appearance against Lesotho.
“We were missing so many wingers, Samuel Kalu, Simon Moses, Iwobi in the first game and Musa not playing in a club but finally Musa could play because we were only 21 players and with Musa 22.
“He (Musa) came in, he was there, he was fit, he took the physical tests, there was no reason not to allow him to come in.
“He is the captain of the team and he finished as captain on the pitch.
“We also wanted to help him find a good club now,” Rohr said.
Rohr also spoke about what the team went through to prosecute the games against Benin Republic and Lesotho while also listing out the positive notes taken from the games. “The result of our last match against Lesotho was a good result,” Rohr added.
“To win 3-0 is always a good result without conceding a goal. We wanted to be calm, more solid after our two games in November. Now we got two clean sheets which is very interesting for the stability of the team, for the balance of the team and scoring three goals without any set piece is also very interesting.
“Maduka Okoye was sick in the last moment, he had stomach problems and could not play, he had to stay in the hotel but he is much better now and he left Lagos. We had to change four to five players with the goalkeeper, with Ola Aina who was still injured and tired from the Benin game and Alex who came in for Henry and also Aribo who was sick, the same thing as Okoye, a stomach problem. He was replaced by Etebo.
“It is never easy to come into the side in the last moment without any training session on Sunday. We were travelling and stopping for the President’s speech in Lagos and arriving late in Lagos and having the celebration for the President’s (Amaju Pinnick) election so we could not train on Sunday. We had a short training session on Monday and not at all for Alex Iwobi who had the authorisation to play only few hours before the second game and he had been isolated, he was in quarantine since the morning of the match in Cotonou.”
