Ex Super Eagles Coach, Stephen Keshi, Dies At 54

 

Stephen Okechukwu Keshi, former coach of the super Eagles and a onetime captain of the of the national team, is dead, his family has announced. He was 54. Confirming this news is his brother Emmanuel Ado who said that the Keshi died of Cardiac arrest in the early hours of Wednesday, June 8. 

 He said “With thanksgiving to God, the Ogbuenyi Fredrick Keshi family of Illah in Oshimili North Local Government Area of Delta State, announces the death of Mr. Stephen Okechukwu Chinedu Keshi. Our son, brother, father, father-in-law, brother-in-law, has gone to be with his wife of 35 years Mrs. Kate Keshi, who passed on the 9th December 2015. Since her death, Keshi has been in mourning. He came back to Nigeria to be with her. He had planned to fly back today Wednesday, before he suffered a cardiac arrest. He has found rest”.  Mr. Keshi had lost his wife Kate to cancer last December.

The Big Boss is the only Nigerian coach to have won the Africa Cup of Nations when he took the team to the 2013 African Cup of Nation.  He also became the second person in history to win the competition as a player and as a coach after Mahmoud El-Gohary of Egypt when he led the Super Eagles to win the tournament in 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Keshi first played for the Super Eagles in 1981 at age 20. The late Central Defender withdrew from the national team in 1994. He had 64 caps and scored nine goals and as coach, he qualified an unlikely Togolese national team for the 2006 World Cup in Germany but was sacked and replaced with German Otto Pfister, just before the tournament. He achieved his dream to manage a team at the World Cup when he coached the Super Eagles side to the tournament in 2014.

He is survived by four children and his mother.