Sports Keshi's time is over,new NFF president does not like him

Stephen Keshi might not be offered any contract by the new leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation(NFF).

There are reports that the Keshi does not particularly tick all the boxes for the new executives who were elected yesterday in Warri,Delta State,with the board said to have their misgivings about handing him a long term deal.

Keshi's previous contract expired after the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament in Brazil,and since then talks about a new deal has stalled.

The NFF are not keen to renewing his contract,and reports have emerged that other coaches have been sampled to replace him.

German coach Christoph Daum claimed that he was approached by the NFF to take charge of the national team.

“I had offers last week to become coach of Nigeria,” mobo.de quoted Daum as saying.

The former Bayer Leverkusen coach is not the only one linked to Keshi's job,former Super Eagles manager Samson Siasia has equally been linked with a return to the national team.

If Keshi is to fear for his job,what the new NFF president,Amaju Pinnick said during the 2014 World Cup tournament does not offer much encouragement.

“I like Keshi as a person but the Eagles run up to the World cup and their first game has proven to me that Keshi has reached his limit” Pinnick said as a TV guest in a morning show,a day after Nigeria's 0-0 draw against Iran.

“He is a national hero,I celebrate him for all he has achieved with the team in such a short time but it appears he can’t move the Eagles forward unless he improves on his abilities”

Further proof that Pinnick may not reckon with Keshi continuing coaching the Super Eagles are the comments he made after the World Cup.

"We failed to go further in Brazil because our coaches did not adopt the scientific approach to winning matches. Football has gone beyond having a coaching crew on the bench. The trend now is to have the technical backroom staff, peopled by expert coaches, who win matches from the bench," Pinnick told Vanguard Sports.

"I give you an example. Berti Vogts was the head of the backroom of the USA team at the World Cup. The story was said in Brazil that during the match against Ghana, that when the Ghanaians equalised, that Klinsmann, who is the coach of the USA team, quickly sent a message to Vogts to analyse the last five minutes of the match. Vogts responded that one of the Ghanaian defenders was limping and that they should exploit his side, which the USA team did and scored the winner. Klinsmann did this because he recognises that he does not see the things that other technical experts could see from afar. And that is largely because a coach is only thinking of winning and what his players are doing. He hardly sees the defects and strong-points of his opponents.

"That is why nearly all the teams at the World Cup have the technical backroom staff. But Nigeria did not have that and that was because Keshi did not want it. He thought that they were going to take his job away and we all saw in Brazil that it could have been very different if we had such technical experts in the backroom, advising Keshi during match days or even before.

"Another example is the injury of Ogenyi Onazi. That was not accidental. It was a deliberate plan by the French backroom staff, who saw Onazi as the only threat to their ambition to reach the next round. Ahmed Musa shone like a star in the first half but was taken out in the second half by the French players, who crowded him and made him ineffective. That is the work of the backroom staff . Football has gone scientific but we went to Brazil with analogue system.

"I also observed during the short stay in Brazil that we were the only team, whose players warmed up before the start of matches without the coaches around to watch and take notes. I may be wrong on this but I saw the French team warm up with their coaches watching and guiding them."

Also, some members of the past board were re-elected which could be a factor why Keshi might not be retained.

Keshi and Chris Green does not sing from the same song-sheet,with both men not particularly keen about each other.

But in all these,Keshi will be allowed to coach the Super Eagles in the qualifiers against Sudan this month after which his fate will be sealed.

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