Nigeria\u2019s U-17 women\u2019s team captain, Harmony Chidi, has opened up about the early opposition she faced from her mother when she decided to pursue football, revealing that her late grandmother was her only family supporter at the time.\n<\/p>\n
Speaking in an interview with BBC News Pidgin monitored by PUNCH Online on Thursday after leading the Flamingos to their historic FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup triumph, Chidi said her mother initially rejected the idea of her playing the game and preferred that she get married instead.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started football, my mama didn\u2019t allow me play, she didn\u2019t want me playing football, she wanted me to get married. Only my grandma encouraged me and now my grandma is no more, it\u2019s just me and my mum now,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
The young captain also spoke about the personal struggles she encountered while building her career, particularly the impact of injuries and the loss of friendships.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing harder injury, all my friends left me, nobody wanted to associate with me,\u201d Chidi added. <\/p>\n
Despite those challenges, she said she draws motivation from some of the world\u2019s top footballers.
She named Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen, Manchester City forward Erling Haaland, England captain Harry Kane, Barcelona winger Raphinha and Super Falcons legend Asisat Oshoala as players she admires.\n<\/p>\n
Chidi made clear that her ambition goes beyond admiration. She wants to surpass them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have like five players that I dream to be better than: Osimhen, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Raphinha and Asisat Oshoala. I want to be greater than them,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
She singled out Oshoala in particular: \u201cMy dream is to be greater than Asisat Oshoala.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Nigeria\u2019s U-17 women\u2019s team captain, Harmony Chidi, has opened up about the early opposition she faced from her mother when she decided to pursue football, revealing that her late grandmother… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}