Super Eagles Coach, Gernot Rohr confessed to journalists in Uyo that the Chipolopolo of Zambia gave his side a difficult fight despite Nigeria’s 1-0 win in the Russia 2018 World Cup qualifier played at the Godswill Akpabio Stadium last night.
He noted that the visitors kept his boys busy as they believed that they had a good chance of leveling up with Nigeria on 10 points should they win.
“It was a very difficult game even when we did not underrate the Zambians. We had seen them play and didn’t expect that they would be this difficult but we won and I must commend the players for their hard work,” he stated.
“We must also remember that our win in Ndola was key to put us in pole position. One man that did well was Ikeme. He called his teammates last night and spoke to Mikel and other members of the team and asked that we do our best to qualify. Today’s victory is for Ikeme and hope he would recover to join the squad to Russia.”
On the obvious errors by Agu Mikel, Rohr refused to apportion blames on any player maintaining that there is no room to blame player.
“We played as a team and won as a team. The players deserve commendation because it’s not easy playing this calibre of match..”
On his plan for the game against Algeria, Rohr said he is executing the match with his full compliment of players as he targets a win too.