Tuesday January 23 would have been former Nigerian player and coach, Stephen Keshi’s 56th birthday and tech giant Google chose to honour the successful coach with a doodle.
Doodles are changes made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists and the tech giant featured Keshi on its search engine for Africa’s most populous nation.
Today we celebrate the life of Nigerian football icon Stephen Keshi. The beautiful game took Keshi all over the world, as a player and coach. Happy Birthday Big Boss. #StephenKeshi #GoogleDoodle pic.twitter.com/KIwPtDopCi
— Google in Africa (@googleafrica) January 23, 2018
Father✅
Legend✅
Captain✅
Leader✅
The most successful Black African coach of all time👏🏻 #GoogleDoodle.@Google have paid a truly brilliant tribute to Stephen Keshi on what would have been his 56th birthday🎁 🎂 1962-2016 pic.twitter.com/SSkSdsFHdk
— Oluwashina Okeleji (@oluwashina) January 23, 2018
Keshi, who was fondly referred to as ‘Big Boss’, lost the battle to cancer in June 2016.
His stellar career for Nigeria included winning the AFCON in 1994 as a player before coaching the Super Eagles to glory in 2013 in South Africa joining the elite group of footballers to win the AFCON as player and manager. In the same year, he qualified the Super Eagles for the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil, making him the first African coach to qualify two African countries for the World Cup finals.
He had captained the Super Eagles for 11 years, winning the Africa Cup of Nations gold, silver and bronze over the period.
Keshi was in charge of Mali and Togo, with whom he enjoyed a measure of success before guiding the Super Eagles to a successful AFCON. He was the first coach to qualify lowly Togo to for the 2006 World Cup.
The tactician was awarded Africa Coach of the Year 2013 by CAF after Nigeria’s sterling performance and victory at the AFCON 2013.
The former coach died in Benin City in 2014 aged 54.
