Unexplainable, Why Gernot Rohr Would Not Build His Tactics Around Nigeria's Hottest Striker - Paul Onuachu
Sometimes, someone has to say it. It may sound controversial, and you say just leave the coach to do his job and make his own choices. But it is beyond reasons what some coaches do really.
Paul Onuachu is Nigeria's hottest striker at the moment, and not Victor Osimhen. Onuachu has netted 19 goals in 19 matches for Genks in the Belgium Jupiter League. And that by far supercedes Victor Osimhen's 1goal in eight appearance for Napoli in Italian Serial A.
Onuachu is 5th highest goal scorer in Europe now. That's the record, and I think Onuachu deserve some attention. Why is he scoring so much in a more competitive league games and only scored once in National team games?
He just cannot stop scoring in Belgian Jupiter League appearances for Genk, making him the league’s top scorer by a distance and also placing him 5th on the list for the European Golden shoe, behind only Robert Lewandowski, Kasper Junker, Amahl Pellegrino and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Impressive stats like this makes one wonder why he’s keeping such elite company at club level but has been a non-factor at national team level.
Paul Onuachu has scored just once for the Super Eagles of Nigeria, a good goal in a one nil win against Egypt, important to note he’s only played eight times, with a fair amount of his appearances coming from the bench.
So what is the problem? How does one of the best strikers in Europe suddenly become ineffective at the swap of a jersey? The answer is old and German in nature.
It has become clear that Gernot Rohr’s tactics or lack of it have been holding Paul Onuachu back, the sheer refusal to adapt to his point man’s style of play means neither party have been able to reap the full benefits of one another.
Onuachu is a 6’7 center forward, of course he’s not quick; strikers of that size rarely are. There’s only one way he can play and that is as a target man, and it appears everyone but Gernot Rohr can see that.
Rohr likes his strikers to be quick and full of energy, or at least be mobile and have the ability to run the channels, which is why he favours Osimhen and Odion Ighalo ( before his retirement), which is not bad.
What is bad is getting an entirely different type of striker on the pitch and expecting him to play like that, it makes the player look like he’s not good enough, meanwhile he’s been used wrongly.
The obvious solution would be to tweak the style of play for the duration of the time Paul Onuachu is on the pitch, push the full backs further up the pitch and get crosses into the box rather than just trying to play through the middle.
That’s how Genk have done it, the full backs and to a large extent the wingers serve one purpose going forward, which is to get balls into the box, give their top scorer something to attack, and more often than not he does turn those deliveries into goals.
On the rare occasions Rohr does start Onuachu, he does so mostly as a lone striker flanked by two inverted wingers, Chukwueze, Iwobi, Musa etc, players who are known more for cutting in on their favourite foot rather than putting crosses in.
So the centre forward, who thrives on service, doesn’t get any, and inevitably gets substituted after another blank game, leaving the wrong image in the minds of fans. That's how the best in Europe has become the worst striker in Nigeria. And only get called up by sheer luck, as an alternate player.
The thing is Gernot Rohr just has a problem with changing tactics to suite the kind of players he has in the team, to bring out the best in them.
