{"id":9440,"date":"2016-06-08T03:59:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T03:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=9440"},"modified":"2016-06-08T03:59:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T03:59:06","slug":"stephen-keshi54-joins-his-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=9440","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Keshi(54) joins his ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigerian football icon Stephen Okechukwu Keshi died suddenly in the early hours of today in Benin City, Edo state, TheCable reports.\"Stephen-Keshi\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The former international football player and coach had\u00a0lost his wife of 33 years, Kate, last year<\/strong> after a prolonged battle with cancer.<\/p>\n

TheCable confirmed his death from a\u00a0member of his\u00a0family as well as\u00a0one of his close associates.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was not ill at all, never showed any signs of \u00a0illness, but we suspect he never got over the death of his wife,\u201d a friend said.<\/p>\n

He is survived by\u00a0four children and his mother.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/code><\/p>\n

Keshi, the only Nigerian coach to have won the Africa Cup of Nations, achieved a rare feat in 2013 by becoming only the second person to win the trophy\u00a0both as a player and a coach.<\/p>\n

The only other person to have achieved the feat is\u00a0Egypt\u2019s Mahmoud El-Gohary.<\/p>\n

Keshi, a product of St. Finbarr\u2019s College, Akoka, Lagos, started his playing career at a very young age at ACB Football Club, and later played for\u00a0New Nigeria Bank,\u00a0Stade d\u2019Abidjan,\u00a0Africa Sports,\u00a0Lokeren,\u00a0Anderlecht,\u00a0RC Strasbourg, and a host of other clubs.<\/p>\n

\"NG-[C:G.Mobi,B:Tecn,Wk:2116,Dim:336X280]:Tecno\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He represented Nigeria from 1982, at age 20, till 1994, most of the time captaining the Super Eagles and scoring vital goals from his position as a central defender.<\/p>\n

He also coached Togo\u00a0and Nigeria at the World Cup, as well as Mali.<\/p>\n

Keshi, nicknamed the \u201cBig Boss\u201d for his leadership skills, is the fifth member of the all-conquering 1994 team to die, following Uche Okafor, Thompson Oliha, Rashidi Yekini and Wilfred Agbonavbare.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigerian football icon Stephen Okechukwu Keshi died suddenly in the early hours of today in Benin City, Edo state, TheCable reports. The former international football player and coach had\u00a0lost his wife of 33 years, Kate, last year after a prolonged battle with cancer. TheCable confirmed his death from a\u00a0member of his\u00a0family as well as\u00a0one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[2110,2111,187],"class_list":["post-9440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-mahmoud-el-gohary","tag-stephen-keshi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Stephen-Keshi.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-2sg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9442,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9440\/revisions\/9442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}