KESHI’S SACK A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The Nigeria Football Federation, in the wee hours of today after the NFF executive meeting, terminated the contract of the Chief Coach of Super Eagles Stephen Okechukwu Keshi.

In her statement; ‘’having thoroughly reviewed the reports /findings of the NFF Disciplinary committee, as well as having reviewed the actions and inactions of Mr Stephen Keshi in the performance of his duties as Super Eagles Coach, which we found to lack the required commitment to achieve the Federation’s objectives as set out in the coach’s employment contract’’ we hereby consequently terminate the contract of Mr Keshi.

The Nigerian football loving fans woke up to this news with rude shock. Some fans may have expressed their dissatisfaction with this action, but many others saw this as a victory for the Super Eagles.

In recent years, outside politics, nothing else has polarized Nigerians more than the Super Eagles job. While many believed that, Keshi being the first indigenous coach to win AFCON with the Eagles, should be allowed to continue with his job, others believed, that Keshi’s feat at 2013 AFCON was a fluke . The third group of persons is those who believe that Keshi has done his bit with Eagles and should be allowed to take up fresh challenges elsewhere.

In football generally, it is believed that a coach is as good as his last match.

Keshi became coach of the Nigerian National Team in 2011 after a very promising Siasia-led side unceremoniously failed to qualify for AFCON.

He led Nigeria to qualification for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations, which they went on to win, defeating Burkina Faso 1–0 in the finals. The following day Keshi handed in his resignation, only to reverse his decision the day after Keshi led Nigeria to the 2013 Confederations Cup, defeated Tahiti 6–1, and lost 1–2 to Uruguay in the second game, and also lost 0–3 to World Cup winners, Spain in their final group game. On 16 November 2013, Keshi's Nigeria secured qualification to the 2014 World Cup by beating Ethiopia 4–1 on aggregate in a play-off.

On 18 November 2013, Stephen Keshi set a record in African football by being the first African coach to successfully qualify two African nations (Nigeria and Togo) to the World Cup Finals. He also helped Nigeria become the first country to achieve an African Cup of Nations trophy and World Cup qualification, both in 2013.

On 25 June 2014, Keshi's Nigeria progressed to the knockout stage of 2014 World Cup. They started the tournament with a 0-0 draw against Iran, followed by a controversial 1-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. They lost the final group stage match 2-3 against Argentina, but progressed to the knockout stage, courtesy of a 3-1 win by Bosnia and Herzegovina over Iran. On 30 June 2014, the Super Eagles lost to France in a 2014 World Cup Round-of-16 match. After the match, Keshi announced his resignation as Super Eagles coach but later reversed the decision after the Nigerian Football Federation renewed his contract.

Surprisingly, under Keshi’s nose, Nigeria has become a punch bag for less fancied African Teams. Countries like Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda etc have all battled to either defeat Nigeria or draw Nigeria both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. Just recently, Uganda came all the way to Nigeria to hand the Super Eagles a defeat in their own backyard. This poor run of form has not gone well with soccer loving Nigerians especially as it believed that under Keshi’s tutelage that players with unproven track records have gained access to Eagles while players that perform week in week out in prestigious leagues and clubs all over the world were not considered good enough for the Eagles. On 14 October 2014, Keshi announced that he would move to another job if pressure continues to mount because certain people, whose names he refused to call, were trying to "sabotage" him. However, he stated that he will continue to coach the Super Eagles out of love for the team. 

Keshi’s response to Eagles consistent decline in fortune under his tutelage has gone thus; ‘’Maybe we should bring foreign players as well’’, ‘’we are building a new team’’,” players didn’t play to instruction” and all that. Much as we believe in the rebuilding of the Super Eagles, I think we should ask questions as regards some of the products of the rebuilding process.

What happened to the likes of Sunday Mbah, Ejike Uzoenyi, Juwon Oshaniwa, Gabriel Reuben, Henry Eze, Uche Kalu etc? Could it be that the target was just to get them abroad generate income and start all over again? Your guess is as good as mine.

Like we said earlier, a coach is as good as his last match. The reason clubs like Chelsea at a time relieved one of the very best coaches (Jose Mourinho) of his job is because they understand that coaches expire with a job. The reason Real Madrid recently relieved Carlo Ancelotti of his job is not because Ancelloti is suddenly not good. They understand that the best you can do with a coach after he expires with a job is to part ways with him. If the coach is overwhelmingly amazing, the club or country can include the clause of reuniting with him in the future if need be. The reason Guus Hiddink is no longer the Coach of Netherland despite his outstanding record as a coach is because his latest spell with the team wasn’t working. Keshi has long expired with the Eagles job and needs to try his luck elsewhere. Keshi has done his bit but has long expired as his record since after the World cup is that of a coach in a consistent decline. Any attempt to retain Keshi as Eagles coach would mean that Nigeria is no longer interested in football at the senior level. When SIASIA despite the positive signs we saw in his team failed to qualify Nigeria to AFCON, he was relieved of his job despite winning silver at both the FIFA Under-20 World cup and the Olympics. When Augustine Eguavoen failed to qualify Nigeria for Olympic, he was relieved of his job. Same should have applied to Keshi after leading Eagles to hit rock bottom as regards AFCON qualification in a group that parades the likes of South Africa, who didn’t make it out of the group in AFCON proper, Congo, who hardly qualifies for AFCON and Sudan who are clearly minnows in AFRICAN football.

Waiting for Keshi to apply for the Ivory Coast job before sacking him is simply a case of delaying the needful.

Relieving Keshi of his job may be a good thing, but failing to immediately replace him with a more competent coach would amount to double failure. Much as we are ambassadors of national consciousness, we must not fail to acknowledge the failures of our indigenous coaches in recently concluded competitions. We saw coaches that clearly need training on selection of players, reading of matches, having a clear cut strategy in a game, scouting the right players and knowing when to substitute players and who. If our search for replacement of our national team coaches will not yield crop locally, we can swallow our pride and borrow a leaf from the likes of England who realized when it was time to hire a foreign coach (Eriksson, Capello) Russia,(Capello) United States(Klinsman) and even our neighbours like Ghana (Avram Grant) and hire world class coaches who have performed at the world level to take over the management of our game. We must make haste, avoid the jamboree of having the whole world apply for this job (when we already know what we want) and limit our search to coaches who meet our search criteria.