John Ogu has opened up on one of the most frustrating chapters of his international career, revealing that former Super Eagles head coach Gernot Rohr dismissed his standing within the squad because of the league he was playing in, Footynaija.com reports.
Ogu, 37, was at Hapoel Be’er Sheva in Israel at the time, a club where he had won back-to-back league titles and been ranked the top footballer in the country by Israeli sports journalists and professionals heading into the 2016-17 season.
Yet despite that pedigree, he travelled to Russia and did not play a single minute across Nigeria’s three group-stage matches against Croatia, Iceland and Argentina.
The Super Eagles were eliminated in the group stage. Ogu watched from the bench throughout.
‘He said it in our meeting’
What made it harder to accept, Ogu has now revealed, was not the absence from the pitch but a specific moment in the team hotel that told him everything about where he stood.
Speaking on Bet9ja’s Home Turf podcast, as revealed by Punch, the former midfielder did not hold back.
“I went to the World Cup and I didn’t play a game,” he said.
“We are in the room where we watch football and the coach looked at me and said because we are playing in Israel that our league is not at the top. He has already downgraded me because I was coming from the Israeli league. He downgraded me. He said it in our meeting.”
The midfield competition at the tournament was fierce, with John Obi Mikel, Wilfred Ndidi, Ogenyi Onazi, Joel Obi and Oghenekaro Etebo all part of the squad. But for Ogu, the issue was never about quality of competition. It was about a public dismissal of the environment he had thrived in.
It was not the first time Ogu felt the sting of a World Cup that slipped away from him. He had been a key part of Nigeria’s qualifying campaign for the 2014 tournament in Brazil, only to be left out of Stephen Keshi’s final squad despite playing almost every qualifier, watching players who had not featured in a single qualifying match make the cut instead.
Two World Cups, zero minutes. For a player who gave years of consistent service to the Super Eagles, the reflection is a painful one.
