Stephen Keshi Google celebrates posthumous 56th birthday of Nigerian great footballer

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Google’s doodle of Tuesday, January 23 is dedicated to Stephen Keshi.

Nigerian football great Stephen Keshi has been celebrated by Google on his posthumous 56th birthday.

Google celebrates posthumous 56th birthday of Stephen Keshi (Google )

Keshi who twice won the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) with the Super Eagles, as a player and as a coach died in June 2016.

He would have turned 56 on Tuesday, January 23 and to celebrate him Google has dedicated the day’s doodle to him.

He was buried on Saturday, July 30.

Google doodle to celebrate Keshi

An image that often looks like a rough drawing, Google uses doodle on their homepage to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.

Keshi was twice coach of the Super Eagles (Getty Images)

For Keshi, Google used a doodle showing him as a Super Eagles player in his No. 4 jersey and as a manager with his famous face cap.

1994 and 2013, the years of his AFCON wins were also highlighted in the doodle.

Keshi’s career

Born on 23 January 1962, Stephen Okechukwu Keshi started out with St. Finbarr’s College, Lagos and featured for domestic club sides ACB Football Club and New Nigeria Bank.

With New Nigeria Bank he won the West African Club Championship twice in 1983, 1984 before moving abroad to Cote d’Ivoire.

He was one of the first Nigerian players to move abroad, playing for Stade d’Abidjan and Africa Sports of Cote d’Ivoire.

For African Sports, he won Côte d’Ivoire Premier Division and Cote d’Ivoire Coupe double in 1986 before making his way to Belgium where he played for Lokeren, Anderlecht, among many others.

At Anderlecht, he won the Belgian Cup twice in 1988, 1989 and the Jupiler League in 1991.

Keshi won the AFCON as a player in 1994 (BBC Sports)

His 20-year playing career included stints in France where he played for RC Strasbourg, the United States and finally in Malaysia, with Perlis FA.

‘The Big Boss’, as he was fondly called, made his first appearance for the Super Eagles in 1981 at age 20 and the central defender retired in 1994 after picking up 64 caps.

He scored nine goals and captained the Super Eagles to their second AFCON title in Tunisia 94. He also captained Nigeria to their first ever FIFA World Cup in the USA where they were knocked out by Italy in the second round.

Coaching career

At the end of his playing Career, Keshi headed to the United States to get his coaching badges.

He was part of the coaching staff for the Nigerian national team on several fronts, including being the head coach for the Golden Eaglets at the 2001 African Youth Championship.

Keshi was coach of the Togo national football team from 2004 and 2006, during which time he surprisingly qualified them to their first-ever FIFA World Cup appearance in Germany 2006, the first ever Nigerian coach to achieve that feat.

In 2011 he was appointed coach of the Super Eagles of Nigeria, leading the country to the 2013 AFCON.

In 2013, he led the Super Eagles to the AFCON title as a manager (Getty Images )

He became only the second person-first was Egypt’s Mahmoud El-Gohary- to have won the Africa Cup of Nations as both a player and coach.

He led Nigeria to 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil to become the first African coach to reach the knockout stage where they fell to France in the Round of 16.

‘Big Boss’ is also the only African coach to have qualified for the World Cup with two African nations-Togo and Nigeria.