The Super Eagles held a crisis\u00a0 meeting behind under-fire\u00a0 Nigeria coach\u00a0 Gernot Rohr on Monday night as\u00a0 they try to\u00a0 turn things around their precarious position at the Russia 2018 World Cup ahead of their next fixture against Iceland on Friday.<\/p>\n
Nigeria are\u00a0 in grave danger of an early World Cup exit after opening their campaign in the tournament with a\u00a0 2-0 defeat to Croatia in Kaliningrad on Saturday. The three-time African champions must win the clash\u00a0 at\u00a0 Volgograd Arena to keep alive their hopes of advancing to the second round of the championship.<\/p>\n
A below-par Croat side fired by La Liga stars Lukas Modric and Ivan Rakitc ran out winners after an analogue Nigerian team failed to deal with dead ball situations.<\/p>\n
New Stoke City midfielder Oghenekaro Etebo, who was the shining light in the hapless Rohr\u2019s side, inadvertently directed the ball into his own net, while William Troost-Ekong gave away a needless penalty converted by the Man-of-Match Real Madrid midfielder Modric.<\/p>\n
Our correspondent learnt that the players were not happy with Rohr\u2019s team approach to the encounter in which China-based forward Odion Ighalo was isolated, Chelsea wing-back Victor Moses rendered a mediocrity showing and young Arsenal attacker Alex Iwobi was anonymous until he was substituted.<\/p>\n
Camp sources told our correspondent on Tuesday that the seething players allegedly held a meeting where they\u00a0 resolved to give their all against the\u00a0 fearless Nordic side who made\u00a0 Argentina superstar Lionel Messi look ordinary in their 1-1 draw\u00a0 at the Spartak Stadium in Moscow on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players reviewed their performances in the match against Croatia and resolved to hold talks with the coach before the game,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
The source also claimed that captain Mikel Obi\u00a0 has come under pressure from his colleagues to persuade Rohr\u00a0 to\u00a0 feature players in their natural positions and also to play two strikers upfront.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Israel-based John Ogucould land a starting role with Leicester City midfielder Wilfred Ndidi dropping to the bench.<\/p>\n
Ndidi, whose fitness has a question mark,\u00a0\u00a0 emerged as\u00a0 one of the flops against\u00a0 Croatia, a tie\u00a0 in which Etebo was a revelation.<\/p>\n
It was also learnt that Rohr wants players who can match the combative and athletic Iceland side, with\u00a0 players of an\u00a0 average 1.90m in height.<\/p>\n
It was also learnt that the former Gabon manager could retain striker Odion Ighalo in his line-up and hand\u00a0 Ahmed Musa a starting role\u00a0 as he seeks to break down Iceland\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Super Eagles held a crisis\u00a0 meeting behind under-fire\u00a0 Nigeria coach\u00a0 Gernot Rohr on Monday night as\u00a0 they try to\u00a0 turn things around their precarious position at the Russia 2018 World Cup ahead of their next fixture against Iceland on Friday. Nigeria are\u00a0 in grave danger of an early World Cup exit after opening their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[996,997,999,998],"class_list":["post-1190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-2018-world-cup","tag-eagless","tag-mikel-obi","tag-rohr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}