Sparta Rotterdam goalkeeper Maduka Okoye has been declared the new first choice goalkeeper of the senior national team of Nigeria.
Rohr confirmed the choice of the 21 year old in an interview with ESPN with an explanation on how they arrived at the choice alongside goalkeeper trainer Alloy Agu.
He listed the hierarchy of the goalkeepers in the set up of the team including out of favour Slovakia based goalkeeper Matthew Yakubu of Sered.
“No. 1 is Maduka,” Rohr told ESPN. “These decisions, I take them with [goalkeeper coach Alloy Agu] because he is a specialist for goalkeeper training.
“Myself and Alloy, we agreed that it’s actually Maduka. We have the experienced [Daniel Akpeyi] doing good matches with this club in South Africa.
“We have the young [Francis Uzoho] coming back after injury, but he has to play also now not only on the bench. We have also [Matthew Yakubu]. There’s a good potential now because this position was a big problem for us so we have more now.”
He said he was under pressure to drop the shot stopper after conceding four times against Sierra Leone at home but stuck to him as it isn’t proper to drop a goalkeeper after one bad game.
“You cannot drop a player because you say he plays one bad game,” Rohr told ESPN of the pressure he had faced to drop the youngster for the second leg.
“It is bad for his confidence.”
