Super Eagles head coach Gernot Rohr sets himself a World Cup semi finals target at Russia 2018

SUPER Eagles head coach Gernot Rohr has set himself a target of reaching the semi finals of next year's World Cup hoping to become the first African team ever to reach the last four of the tournament.

Since the World Cup began in 1930, no African team has ever got beyond the quarter finals, with Cameroon, Senegal and Ghana achieving this in 1990, 2002 and 2010 respectively. Nigeria's best showing has been to reach the last 16, which the Eagles have achieved thrice in 1994, 1998 and 2014.

Come Russia 2018, however, Mr Rohr hopes to do better and is buoyed by the fact that his team qualified from the so-called group of death with relative ease and still has a lot of new and young players that can be brought in. Next month, the Eagles will play their final qualification game against Algeria on the 11th and then on the 14th proceed to Russia for a friendly game with Argentina.

Mr Rohr said: "We will try to do as well but unfortunately, here, the ambitions are a little more excessive. I believe the team must reach at least the semi-finals.

"We have the ambition of the leaders to manage, even if I get along very well with the president Amaju Pinnick), who came to get me. As in all African countries, it’s never easy but for now, it’s going very well."

Over the next week, Mr Rohr will publish the names of the players who will prosecute the two matches against Algeria and Argentina and the list is expected to contain several new faces. During the qualifiers, the coach was reluctant to change his side but now that the World Cup berth is secured, Mr Rohr will start the process of looking at new players.