Like being on a first date, Gabon coach Rohr revels in first Nations Cup final

In the surreal surroundings of Gabon’s gutted national stadium here on Saturday, Gernot Rohr likened his debut experience at the Africa Cup of Nations to a first date.

The youthful looking 58-year-old told AFP: “My first Nations Cup – it’s a beautiful adventure, I’m happy to live through it. It’s like the first time with a woman, it makes your heart beat faster - that’s what it’s like.

“It’s nice to experience that at my age!”

Rohr was speaking after conducting a training session at the Omnisport stadium in the heart of the Gabon capital.

Initially it was intended to be the flagship venue at the 2012 Cup but work on modernising it started late, and in the end the brand new Chinese-backed L’Amitie Stadium outside Libreville was built.

The stadium has been stripped bare to a hulk of concrete, the only colour the velvet green turf.

Silent witnesses to the Gabonese run-out comprised three giant cranes, a couple of overworked cement mixers, scaffolding reaching to the sky, 50-odd workmen dangling from the stadium’s superstructure, mountains of sand, and a handful of reporters.

Long tradition of foreign coaches

Drilling and banging echoed around the empty Gabonese footballing cathedral.

“It’s a shame we can’t use this stadium and this pitch, it’s beautiful,” commented Rohr looking around him fondly at the building site.

The former team mate of Franz Beckenbauer at Bayern Munich in the mid-1970s is continuing the long tradition of foreign coaches put in charge of African sides.

His cv tells of previous stints with French first division outfits Bordeaux, Nice and Nantes.

In Gabon he believes he has a talented bunch of players including Daniel Cousin, the former Hull City striker, yet the fact that they haven’t kicked a ball in anger in two years weighs on his mind.

“We haven’t played a competitive match in two years so yes of course at last we have one coming up on Monday,” he said.

“Two years of friendly matches is never easy, but we’re not the first team to do this, we’re motivated to enter into competition.”

At the 2010 Nations Cup in Angola, Gabon started brilliantly with a 1-0 defeat of four-time champions Cameroon, with Cousin scoring.

They held Tunisia, who they face again in Group C, to a goalless stalemate but after defeat to Zambia they were edged out of a quarter-final spot on goals scored, by Cameroon.

Rohr said of Monday’s game with first-timers Niger: “Beware of predictions! We don’t think Niger will be the easiest match, in fact it could well turn out to be the most difficult. We’re approaching it with a little bit of apprehension.”