Keshi won’t improve on fortunes of Super Eagles –Poll

Stephen Keshi

Nigerians have said the reinstatement of Stephen Keshi as the coach of the Super Eagles will not improve the fortunes of the country’s senior national football team, the Super Eagles.

This is the outcome of a poll conducted by PUNCH Online, where readers were asked to vote with a question: Do you think the reinstatement of Stephen Keshi as the Head Coach of the Super Eagles will bring positive results to the team?

The participants were asked to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

The profile of the Super Eagles has nosedived in recent months, reaching the lowest ebb on November 15, when the reigning African champions were knocked out of the race to defend their title at the 2015 African Cup of Nations, holding in Equatorial Guinea, by South Africa.

The Eagles held the Bafana Bafana of South Africa to an unimpressive 2-2 draw at the last group qualifying tie at the new Akwa Ibom International Stadium, Uyo, when the team needed a win to pick the second qualifying spot in the group.

In the poll, which opened on November 4 and closed on Thursday, November 27, 2014, 1,099 readers voted.

Six hundred and thirty one of them, representing 57 per cent of the participants believe that Keshi, who had initially been booted out of the team as the head coach by the Nigerian Football Federation after the Eagles matches against Sudan, will not be able to improve on the fortunes of the senior national team.

On the other hand, 468 of the participants, representing 43 per cent of the poll votes, back Keshi to continue as the coach of the Super Eagles, believing that the coach will bring positive results the national team.

President Goodluck Jonathan was believed to have ordered the NFF to reinstate Keshi after the football federation sacked the former Super Eagles captain, due to its belief that the continued stay of the tactician as head coach of the team would not take the Eagles to the next level.

The NFF asked the Head of its Technical Department, Shuaibu Ahmadu, to guide the team through the remaining two AFCON qualifying matches with Congo and South Africa.

Managing to secure a 2-0 away win over the Congolese boosted the chances of the Super Eagles to secure a home win against the Bafana Bafana, in a match the Nigerians needed a win to scale through to the AFCON finals in 2015.

Experts have consistently blamed Keshi for the failure of the team to put up an impressive showing in Super Eagles outings since winning the AFCON title in South Africa in 2013.