Technical Director to the NFF, Bitrus Bewarang, has called for calm from Nigerians over the pending in limbo state of the contract of the Super Eagles Head Coach, Gernot Rohr.
He said that talks concerning the contract with the German were disrupted due to the outbreak of the coronavirus which prevented him from leaving France.
Bewarang went on to assure that plans to renew the contract of the 66-year-old was already in place until the spread of the pandemic virus.
Rohr took over as the coach of the country’s senior national football team on August 9, 2016, when he signed a two-year contract which he renewed for another two years in January 2018. Rohr has managed the Eagles in 38 games; he won 29 and lost ten times while drawing 7 times and 10 losses.
With less than three months to the end of his contract, most Nigerian fans have expressed concern over the future of the Eagles’ boss. Despite the stance of the NFF that they wanted to retain the service of the Franco-German, talks about the possible departure of the coach have not gone away.
A lot of uncertainty has surrounded the future of Rohr (below) who recently told Nigerian-British journalist, Osasu Obayiuwana, that he would not ask the NFF what was going on with his contract renewal, stressing that he wanted to focus on his job while he would continue to wait for them until they were ready to discuss with him.
However, the NFF technical director insisted that were it not for the widespread coronavirus, which had led to countries shutting down and closing their boundaries, they would have sat with Rohr to finalise the new deal. He shared:
“It is unfortunate that we can’t do anything about the disaster.
“It is really unfortunate but the truth of the matter is we cannot say anything about it. From the NFF, what I can say is that we were ready to renew his contract but now that France is one of the countries that have been shut down due to the coronavirus and we might not be seeing him (Rohr) for a while.
“So, we have to exercise patience with some of these things.”
