Striker grew up in Nigeria before impressing in a youth tournament to earn ticket to Manchester
KELECHI IHEANACHO has described his journey from playing football on the streets of Nigeria as a kid to Premier League starlet.
The Manchester City striker has been making his mark as Sergio Aguero’s deputy.
But writing for The Players’ Tribune, the talent talked about his humble beginnings and how they shaped him.
Iheanacho, 20, said: “Where I grew up in southern Nigeria, it was kind of like a ghetto. It was a tough place to be a kid.
“You had to work very hard to make a living there, and my family did not have the extra funds to buy a real ball.
“Most of my friends didn’t have one either, so we would run around the streets and use whatever we could find to kick around. We would make balls out of socks, or sometimes we even used a balloon.”
Ihanacho’s coaches used to walk the streets blowing a whistle to let the kids know it was time to play as many did not have phones or the internet.
And the youngster told how his mother tried to ban him from playing against older children on rock-hard pitches so he snuck out.
He was injured and had to be carried home by his coaches with his legs covered in blood – only to receive a spanking.
Iheanacho’s first experience watching Manchester City was to see future strike partner Aguero’s dramatic last-minute winner against QPR that won the title for the Citizens.
He said: “There was one place in town that everybody called the ‘game centre,’ and it had a satellite dish, but you had to pay money to go inside.
“It was 50 naira [about 15p] for a Premier League match, and I did not have that kind of money. So I would wait outside playing football with my mates until somebody came out and told us what had happened in the match.
“In 2012, when I was 15, I saved some money and went to the game centre on the last day of the Premier League season. It was a very big deal, because the title race was so close.”
And after starring for Nigeria in the the 2013 Under-17 World Cup, he had the chance to join them.
Iheanacho added: “After the tournament, a few European clubs were interested in signing me: Arsenal, Porto and some others.
“And also, of course, Manchester City. I did not know much about these clubs. I thought I would choose Porto, because I knew many African players had success with the club in the past.
“I didn’t really believe that I could play at City because they had so many incredible players.
“But my father told me that I should choose City because he believed that I could achieve great things there.”
Iheanacho celebrated every goal at that tournament pointing to the sky to mark the tragic death of his mother while he was away on Nigeria duty the previous year.
He explained: “I didn’t know how bad it was — I just knew she was sick.
“And it was a very long and hard camp, so I could not go home to see her.
“This was my chance to go for my dream. The next news I got from home, a few weeks later, was that my mother had died.
“My mother loved her children, and she had always pushed me to keep working hard, even when it was football and not books. So I just kept working hard.”
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