Nigeria’s Super Falcons defender, Chidinma Okeke has revealed that her quick rise to stardom in the round leather game caught her by surprise.
Chidinma, who represented Nigeria at the 2016 women’s FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, and in July 2018, was named by Coach Christopher Danjuma in the final squad-list of Nigeria women’s national under-20 football team for the 2018 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup.
Twelve months later, The 19-year-old was also included in the Super Falcons FIFA World Cup squad in 2019 after impressing Thomas Dennerby at the WAFU Women’s Cup where she scored a goal in 6 – 0 demolition of Niger in the semi-final.
However, despite playing for Nigeria at all the national team level, young Chidinma Okeke has never been involved in any qualifying game for the country.
Chidinma who currently plays for Real Madrid of Spain said everything happened to her so fast and was shocked when she was named in the Super Falcons squad to the World Cup in France.
“I will say everything just happened because I didn’t play any U17 World Cup qualifiers but I played all the World Cup games, I didn’t play the for qualifiers for the U20 and the Super Falcons too but I made it to the World Cup.
“My rise was a surprise to me and I believe it’s just God,” she said.
It started at the WAFU tournament because we won the cup and he was looking for fringe players to be included in the team and luckily for me, I was included.
“I never thought I would make it to the World Cup and I was shocked to be in the team,” she said.
Okeke’s only four caps for Nigeria came at the Women’s world cup where the Super Falcons reached the second round of the tournament.
Okeke revealed that veteran of five different FIFA Women’s World Cup Onome Ebi and other senior members of the team helped her settle quickly.
“I learned a lot from Onome Ebi and other experience defenders in the team, they try to help me settle in the team and gave me instructions on the pitch because I was scared in some of our matches at the World Cup,” she concluded.
Packaged by Lanre Olabisi
