Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi has been the spirit child of Nigerian football in the past two years. Will he go? Will he stay on the job?
These were the questions that dominated many minds and therefore their online searches in 2014 as Keshi led the most searched Nigerian sports personality section of the Google Year-In-Search.
According to the search engine giant, the “Year-In-Search” lists are an annual look at the billions of searches performed throughout the year. Year-In-Search uses data from multiple sources while filtering out spam and repeat queries, to build more than 1,000 fascinating top-ten lists across pop culture, sports, music, politics, news, and more.
J.P. Clark described the abiku child in his poem of the same title as one who gets born into a household, dies and is born another time; dies again and is reborn, in a manner that continues to torture the birth mother and entire family. Never has the coach of the national team divided so much opinion as the Super Eagles handler has done in the past two years.
Even his former boss Shaibu Amodu has asked him to quit and stop begging for the job following recent failings.
“Stephen Keshi alone will decide if he has a reputation or he does not have a reputation. If he has a reputation he will walk out of the job. If he does not have, he should stay like a beggar,” Amodu said.
Since he first resigned following his historic capture of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title in South Africa, Keshi has become a thorny issue, a captivating character, a, perhaps, rebellious man manager.
At once he is the best thing to have happened to Nigerian football since Clemens Westerhof, at other times he becomes the most vilified man on the continent.
2014 was the year Keshi was supposed to become a coaching icon. He took the Super Eagles’ Team B – domestic league-based – to third place at the African Nations Championship for the first time (CHAN was the most trending event of 2014).
It was expected that Keshi would turn Nigeria’s campaign at the World Cup into another opportunity to create new records and deeply engrave his name in the records.
He had become the darling of the consumer brands as he became the face of the Peak Milk and Pepsi campaigns ahead of the Mundial.
However, inability to manage properly the team’s strength due to, perhaps, a limited technical know-how (cue the fact that Keshi made the least number of substitutions among all the coaches) and his controversial choice of players to the World Cup hampered the success of the side as it failed to once again shatter the Round of 16 glass ceiling in Brasilia.
After announcing at the mixed zone post-elimination that his contract was up and he was leaving the country for supposed greener pastures following the NFF’s decision not to extend his contract, Keshi’s future seemed to be set in stone.
Many in the Glass House heaved a sigh of relief, they had finally gotten their man to quit without raising hell.
However, like the abiku , the spectre Stephen Keshi has continued to ‘trouble’ Nigerian football and it culminated in sabotage and a sad failure to qualify for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations as defending champions.
His minders claimed he had several jobs lined up across the continent with bigger financial offers to booth.
Still, like the abiku , Keshi decided to keep returning to the Nigeria job even though there is obvious animosity between him and his employers including the non-payment of his salaries.
Like the mother wracked by sadness at the loss of a child and the sudden reappearance of another pregnancy, Keshi’s relationship with the NFF in 2014 ought to go into the records as the most rancorous contractual dispute ever.
Will Keshi stay or will he go? The questions will continue into 2015.
It is pertinent to note that out of the 10 people listed in the category, Keshi influenced eight of them.
From his public spat and controversial snub then recall of striker Ikechukwu Uche (2) to the CHAN hero Ejike Uzoenyi (3) and break out of Rabiu Ali (9) also at the CHAN, Keshi’s signature is imprinted all over.
The only two sports personalities who have had no direct links with Keshi in 2014 are former U-17 player Musa Yahaya (4) whose move to Tottenham Hotspur came with an English language teacher to enable him understand the instruction of coaches and interact with other players.
Super athlete Blessing Okagbare (7) who won two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games was also one not directly influenced by Keshi.
While Keshi’s influence on Nigerian football will continue to grow if finally offered a new contract, one hopes that a sweeter, more positive narrative will dominate our football at the end of the next year, much better than the lot we were saddled with this old one.
