Which is bettter...

[Tobi17]

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

[vancity eagle]

It is a total misnomer that Rohr never played attacking football. Just go look at many of the scoreline and you will see PLENTY of goals in the Rohr era. In fact far more goals than most eras, including the much hyped Keshi era.

[Tobi17]

It is a total misnomer that Rohr never played attacking football. Just go look at many of the scoreline and you will see PLENTY of goals in the Rohr era. In fact far more goals than most eras, including the much hyped Keshi era.

Maybe you're right about Rohr's team and scoring goals, or my statistics are poor, but I'm just going by the popular consensus among Nigerian fans that we played very tepid football under Rohr

[Synopsis]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

[gochino]

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

Both coaches were bad, Rohr over stayed and kept telling us we are going to the World cup to learn, we wouldn’t have made any impact anyway. As for Eguosaurus he was just not smart enough and too old school for the job!

[Dammy]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

I believe the exit of the " big club" players like Mikel and Victor Moses, that Rohr was fond of harping on about changed his mentality and he reverted to a more defensive game.

[bushboy]

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

We were not "found out" by Ghana. We played better in both legs and created several clear cut chances. Nothing Ghana did gave them victory. They are going to the WC because Osimhen, Moses, Aribo all missed excellent opportunities to score. Plus Uzoho gave a gift. Ghana barely had one clear chance to score and the only way they were EVER going to score was the way they did. An error.

For anyone who watched those 2 matches objectively to say Ghana "found us out" is ridiculous.

[Damunk]

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

Both coaches were bad, Rohr over stayed and kept telling us we are going to the World cup to learn, we wouldn’t have made any impact anyway. As for Eguosaurus he was just not smart enough and too old school for the job!

How could he have “kept telling you” that, when he only qualified once?
You are substituting Rohr’s voice with the voice of his haters.
I’d challenge you to cite when he “kept telling us” this, but there’s no point because he probably said it twice at most, and in context. People just jump onto public sentiment and never bother to fact check becos it doesn’t serve their preconceptions.

[Damunk]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

The abuse of Rohr had started long before the 2018 World Cup.
But people love to rewrite history while other people believing in the honesty of their fellow human beings, take them for their word, unquestioningly.

[ANC]

I have not read the OP write up. BUT
I rather SE stay home than go to WC and struggle. Same goes to all African countries.

[vancity eagle]

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

We were not "found out" by Ghana. We played better in both legs and created several clear cut chances. Nothing Ghana did gave them victory. They are going to the WC because Osimhen, Moses, Aribo all missed excellent opportunities to score. Plus Uzoho gave a gift. Ghana barely had one clear chance to score and the only way they were EVER going to score was the way they did. An error.

For anyone who watched those 2 matches objectively to say Ghana "found us out" is ridiculous.

Kpom.

[vancity eagle]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

The abuse of Rohr had started long before the 2018 World Cup.
But people love to rewrite history while other people believing in the honesty of their fellow human beings, take them for their word, unquestioningly.

The Rohr hate was largely unwarranted until the 2022 WCQ, where it was fully deserved for our drab displays against CAR , Liberia, and Cape Verde.

To blame a coach for finishing behind Argentina and the best Croatia team in history that made it all the way to the finals smells of arrogance, and entitlement. This from a team who couldn't even qualify for 2 straight AFCONS.

The "going there to learn" is a stupid and annoying attack that keeps getting repeated as if coaches should be judged on diplomatic statements they make. Only in Nigeria, where agenda ridden fools have no sound basis for criticism must something so ridiculous be repeated ad nauseum to prove some silly point .

Also the idea that Rohr played drab and defensive football, is at best only partially true.

Again I can point to many scorelines that prove otherwise.

Nigeria 4 Cameroon 0
Nigeria 3 Algeria 1
Nigeria 4 Argentina 2
Nigeria 4 Lesotho 2
Nigeria 4 Libya 0
Nigeria 4 Sierra Leone 4

If anything Rohr was a coach who could set the team up for many different formations and tactics and yes he set his team up conservatively ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS, it wasn't by any means an overarching theme overall.

[1naija]

You are basing your assessment of Rohr on what haters defined him to be. You need to look at how Rohr disposed of Algeria and Cameroon to know how he handled teams Nigerian coaches apart from Amodu used to handle them to appreciate him.

The three things that marred Rohrs tenure are:
1: Ikeme's career ending illness
2: Rohr's listening to fake Nigerians and abandoning our next best goalkeeper, Akpeyi.
3. The Sierra Leone game that he abandonned Akpeyi and went with Okoye.

If these 3 things didnt happen Rohr would still be coaching Nigeria today.

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

[Orion]

It's not the case of being boring on purpose. You have to play according to your strengths.

The problem is that many SE fans believe we have players better than we do. They want better football, but we currently don't have the players to deliver that kind of football, especially against top teams.

Rohr was not under that illusion, so he used what was at his disposal the get the required results. People talk about CAR, but we defeated CAR over two legs. We lost a fluke game in Lagos but recovered to beat them on goal difference overall.

[gochino]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

The abuse of Rohr had started long before the 2018 World Cup.
But people love to rewrite history while other people believing in the honesty of their fellow human beings, take them for their word, unquestioningly.

The Rohr hate was largely unwarranted until the 2022 WCQ, where it was fully deserved for our drab displays against CAR , Liberia, and Cape Verde.

To blame a coach for finishing behind Argentina and the best Croatia team in history that made it all the way to the finals smells of arrogance, and entitlement. This from a team who couldn't even qualify for 2 straight AFCONS.

The "going there to learn" is a stupid and annoying attack that keeps getting repeated as if coaches should be judged on diplomatic statements they make. Only in Nigeria, where agenda ridden fools have no sound basis for criticism must something so ridiculous be repeated ad nauseum to prove some silly point .

Also the idea that Rohr played drab and defensive football, is at best only partially true.

Again I can point to many scorelines that prove otherwise.

Nigeria 4 Cameroon 0
Nigeria 3 Algeria 1
Nigeria 4 Argentina 2
Nigeria 4 Lesotho 2
Nigeria 4 Libya 0
Nigeria 4 Sierra Leone 4

If anything Rohr was a coach who could set the team up for many different formations and tactics and yes he set his team up conservatively ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS, it wasn't by any means an overarching theme overall.

Dude, it is basic Psychology, you don't tell your team they are inferior to their opponents and expect them to come out smoking. A coach needs to give his players a winning mentality, it's really that simple! According to Pele ,football 90 % = brain and 10% =legs, I think he wasn't stupid for saying that. If every coach at the world cup came with Rohr's mentality, then FIFA can as well scrap the world cup! Look, football is a competitive sport! It's bad enough that most african countries go to the world cup with the sole aim of getting to the second round but saying you are going the biggest football event in the world to learn is taking it too far! You listed matches from 2018, yes Rohr started well but kept getting worse with time, he was coach for 5 years but his team played like they were meeting each other for the first time, that my friend is the definition of a bad coach! I really don't understand the debate, both coaches were bad! I would even lean towards Eguavoen because he was under pressure and only had the team for a few weeks.

[gochino]

It's not the case of being boring on purpose. You have to play according to your strengths.

The problem is that many SE fans believe we have players better than we do. They want better football, but we currently don't have the players to deliver that kind of football, especially against top teams.

Rohr was not under that illusion, so he used what was at his disposal the get the required results. People talk about CAR, but we defeated CAR over two legs. We lost a fluke game in Lagos but recovered to beat them on goal difference overall.

It's just strange that he is now claiming that he would have won the AFCON, I don't remember him saying that when he was incharge, what a coward!

[Orion]

It's not the case of being boring on purpose. You have to play according to your strengths.

The problem is that many SE fans believe we have players better than we do. They want better football, but we currently don't have the players to deliver that kind of football, especially against top teams.

Rohr was not under that illusion, so he used what was at his disposal the get the required results. People talk about CAR, but we defeated CAR over two legs. We lost a fluke game in Lagos but recovered to beat them on goal difference overall.

It's just strange that he is now claiming that he would have won the AFCON, I don't remember him saying that when he was incharge, what a coward!

I don't think he is so far off, though. After all, Egypt got to the final. With a bit of luck here and there, SE may have been able to get to the final. I still don't believe we were good enough to win the cup with the players we had.

[Damunk]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

The abuse of Rohr had started long before the 2018 World Cup.
But people love to rewrite history while other people believing in the honesty of their fellow human beings, take them for their word, unquestioningly.

The Rohr hate was largely unwarranted until the 2022 WCQ, where it was fully deserved for our drab displays against CAR , Liberia, and Cape Verde.

To blame a coach for finishing behind Argentina and the best Croatia team in history that made it all the way to the finals smells of arrogance, and entitlement. This from a team who couldn't even qualify for 2 straight AFCONS.

The "going there to learn" is a stupid and annoying attack that keeps getting repeated as if coaches should be judged on diplomatic statements they make. Only in Nigeria, where agenda ridden fools have no sound basis for criticism must something so ridiculous be repeated ad nauseum to prove some silly point .

Also the idea that Rohr played drab and defensive football, is at best only partially true.

Again I can point to many scorelines that prove otherwise.

Nigeria 4 Cameroon 0
Nigeria 3 Algeria 1
Nigeria 4 Argentina 2
Nigeria 4 Lesotho 2
Nigeria 4 Libya 0
Nigeria 4 Sierra Leone 4

If anything Rohr was a coach who could set the team up for many different formations and tactics and yes he set his team up conservatively ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS, it wasn't by any means an overarching theme overall.

Dude, it is basic Psychology, you don't tell your team they are inferior to their opponents and expect them to come out smoking. A coach needs to give his players a winning mentality, it's really that simple! According to Pele ,football 90 % = brain and 10% =legs, I think he wasn't stupid for saying that. If every coach at the world cup came with Rohr's mentality, then FIFA can as well scrap the world cup! Look, football is a competitive sport! It's bad enough that most african countries go to the world cup with the sole aim of getting to the second round but saying you are going the biggest football event in the world to learn is taking it too far! You listed matches from 2018, yes Rohr started well but kept getting worse with time, he was coach for 5 years but his team played like they were meeting each other for the first time, that my friend is the definition of a bad coach! I really don't understand the debate, both coaches were bad! I would even lean towards Eguavoen because he was under pressure and only had the team for a few weeks.

Like I said to you before, you are reshuffling, recycling and amplifying words totally to suit your sentiments.
1Naija also mentioned earlier that people are basing their assessments on how haters chose to define him.

Who for instance told you that he told his team they were inferior? Has any player said that? Even now after he has left?
It’s one of those extrapolations that gained momentum and then developed a life of its own.

At the time of the passing statement, it so happens that Klopp in a pre-Champions league (vs Real or maybe Barca) match press conference said something very similar - something about the Spaniards having world class players and that Liverpool were the underdogs etc etc.
I pointed it out and posted the video at the top time, arguing that it has always been a common tactic by many coaches to
1. Manage expectations and
2. Wrong-foot the opposition.

My Nigerian brothers ‘pleaded the fifth’ on that particular point, following it up by effectively saying Nigerians don’t do or understand those kind of mind games and we only understand arrogance and loudness.

Now the story is that Rohr was telling his players they weren’t good enough.

‘Agenda must agend’.

[Damunk]

Exactly, only that we are not sure whether Tobi was one of the haters or not, and he hasn’t confirmed or denied when I asked.

You are basing your assessment of Rohr on what haters defined him to be. You need to look at how Rohr disposed of Algeria and Cameroon to know how he handled teams Nigerian coaches apart from Amodu used to handle them to appreciate him.

The three things that marred Rohrs tenure are:
1: Ikeme's career ending illness
2: Rohr's listening to fake Nigerians and abandoning our next best goalkeeper, Akpeyi.
3. The Sierra Leone game that he abandonned Akpeyi and went with Okoye.

If these 3 things didnt happen Rohr would still be coaching Nigeria today.

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

[gochino]

Rohr had the perfect balance pre 2018 world cup.

The abuse of Rohr had started long before the 2018 World Cup.
But people love to rewrite history while other people believing in the honesty of their fellow human beings, take them for their word, unquestioningly.

The Rohr hate was largely unwarranted until the 2022 WCQ, where it was fully deserved for our drab displays against CAR , Liberia, and Cape Verde.

To blame a coach for finishing behind Argentina and the best Croatia team in history that made it all the way to the finals smells of arrogance, and entitlement. This from a team who couldn't even qualify for 2 straight AFCONS.

The "going there to learn" is a stupid and annoying attack that keeps getting repeated as if coaches should be judged on diplomatic statements they make. Only in Nigeria, where agenda ridden fools have no sound basis for criticism must something so ridiculous be repeated ad nauseum to prove some silly point .

Also the idea that Rohr played drab and defensive football, is at best only partially true.

Again I can point to many scorelines that prove otherwise.

Nigeria 4 Cameroon 0
Nigeria 3 Algeria 1
Nigeria 4 Argentina 2
Nigeria 4 Lesotho 2
Nigeria 4 Libya 0
Nigeria 4 Sierra Leone 4

If anything Rohr was a coach who could set the team up for many different formations and tactics and yes he set his team up conservatively ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS, it wasn't by any means an overarching theme overall.

Dude, it is basic Psychology, you don't tell your team they are inferior to their opponents and expect them to come out smoking. A coach needs to give his players a winning mentality, it's really that simple! According to Pele ,football 90 % = brain and 10% =legs, I think he wasn't stupid for saying that. If every coach at the world cup came with Rohr's mentality, then FIFA can as well scrap the world cup! Look, football is a competitive sport! It's bad enough that most african countries go to the world cup with the sole aim of getting to the second round but saying you are going the biggest football event in the world to learn is taking it too far! You listed matches from 2018, yes Rohr started well but kept getting worse with time, he was coach for 5 years but his team played like they were meeting each other for the first time, that my friend is the definition of a bad coach! I really don't understand the debate, both coaches were bad! I would even lean towards Eguavoen because he was under pressure and only had the team for a few weeks.

Like I said to you before, you are reshuffling, recycling and amplifying words totally to suit your sentiments.
1Naija also mentioned earlier that people are basing their assessments on how haters chose to define him.

Who for instance told you that he told his team they were inferior? Has any player said that? Even now after he has left?
It’s one of those extrapolations that gained momentum and then developed a life of its own.

At the time of the passing statement, it so happens that Klopp in a pre-Champions league (vs Real or maybe Barca) match press conference said something very similar - something about the Spaniards having world class players and that Liverpool were the underdogs etc etc.
I pointed it out and posted the video at the top time, arguing that it has always been a common tactic by many coaches to
1. Manage expectations and
2. Wrong-foot the opposition.

My Nigerian brothers ‘pleaded the fifth’ on that particular point, following it up by effectively saying Nigerians don’t do or understand those kind of mind games and we only understand arrogance and loudness.

Now the story is that Rohr was telling his players they weren’t good enough.

‘Agenda must agend’.

Saying your team are the underdogs is completely different from saying your team is there to learn from other players. Rohr was asked why Mikel didn’t perform well as an attacking midfielder in the Croatia game, he said Mikel is a good midfielder that had been performing well in qualifiers but this time he was playing against superior midfielders...If you don't see anything wrong in that statement, then I really don't have anything more to say.

[Orion]

Rohr's pragmatic, boring, overly cautious and often ponderous style of football that produced decent results?

OR

The perfect attacking football we all badly wanted (majority of the reason for which we wanted Rohr out ), we got that semblance of attacking football (or so we thought) going by the blueprints of what we saw at the just concluded AFCON under Eguavoen, until we got found out by Ghana in most excruciating of circumstances.

So my question is, would we have taken our chances with Rohr who at least knew how to deliver results however unflattering it looked and probably gone to the world cup with him (assuming we got past Ghana under Rohr) which to be fair seemed a good odd, would Rohrs typical brand of football had filled us with any confident since the consensus would have been that we would merely go to Qatar to make up the numbers under Rohr.

Retrospectively speaking, introspection has given me the hindsight I need and it's my closure, we definitely made a fatal mistake sacking Rohr, man should have been left to continue the project he was already building...yes the football was sometimes dreadful, but the man could deliver results, the timing of his sack was not only naive, but very knee-jerky. When will we ever get that perfect balance of playing GOOD football and still getting maximally satisfying results? I mean that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

We were not "found out" by Ghana. We played better in both legs and created several clear cut chances. Nothing Ghana did gave them victory. They are going to the WC because Osimhen, Moses, Aribo all missed excellent opportunities to score. Plus Uzoho gave a gift. Ghana barely had one clear chance to score and the only way they were EVER going to score was the way they did. An error.

For anyone who watched those 2 matches objectively to say Ghana "found us out" is ridiculous.

Over two legs and 180 minutes, they found you out and got the ticket ahead of you. Even Eguavoen, our coach, said Ghana was better in the first leg! Ghana played defensively in the second leg after they scored FIRST and put us in a position where we needed two goals. So, of course, it made us look better. I'm beginning to believe your inability to get out of this delusional position is actually due to a lack of intelligence.

[Damunk]

Saying your team are the underdogs is completely different from saying your team is there to learn from other players. Rohr was asked why Mikel didn’t perform well as an attacking midfielder in the Croatia game, he said Mikel is a good midfielder that had been performing well in qualifiers but this time he was playing against superior midfielders...If you don't see anything wrong in that statement, then I really don't have anything more to say.

Gochino, no offence but I’ve long learned not to take reported speech on CE as accurate and in the right context.
I try to watch the video if possible.
Add that to the jokers calling themselves Nigerian reporters and you’ll understand why.

“Underdogs” is my own interpretation of what was being said, but I’m not quoting Klopp verbatim so don’t run with that to buttress your own point.
Basically, at the time I argued that if the exact same words Klopp publicly spoke had been used by Rohr, they would have been deemed negative, self-demeaning and therefore totally unacceptable.

Even your beef with “learning” is stated by managers every single day, when referring to younger players who have no qualms admitting in public that they are “still learning”.
CE turned it into a trope and everybody started recycling it, many not even knowing when and exactly how the statement was used and in what context. They say “when you separate text from context, all that remains is a con”.

But people will always twist and turn to justify every position they take, especially here.
Nuttin spoil. It’s Peseiro’s turn now.
We pray he excels.

[mcal]

They are going to the WC because Osimhen, Moses, Aribo all missed excellent opportunities to score.

...that's the deal breaker everywhere, at every team, and at every match. See for example United woes, dominate but can't score.
Until Nigeria have front players with collective sense to score, then we will be banging in goals like old days.
It is going to be difficult since all SE players play abroad, and to play a match they gather for days only, and lack coordination within the team.