Kelechi Iheanacho celebrates with Sergio Aguero (Photo: Reuters)
Kelechi Iheanacho has revealed that the first time he ever watched Manchester City was when they clinched the title at the end of the 2011-12 season.
The City striker was just 15 when he says he paid 12p to get into a bar in his native Nigeria to watch the final day of the season unfold, seeing, now teammate, Sergio Aguero score the crucial Premier League clinching goal in stoppage time against QPR.
Now, the 20-year-old, who has now become City's second striker behind Aguero, described how everyone in the bar "was going crazy" as City pipped United to the league title.
“I saved some money and went to the game centre on the last day of the Premier League season,” he told The Players' Tribune.
“It was a very big deal, because the title race was so close. I sat there and watched Sergio Aguero score the last-minute goal that won Man City the title — and that took it away from Man United. “On the TV, Sergio took his shirt off and whipped it around, and everybody in the game centre was going crazy.
“That was maybe the first Man City game I ever watched. I had never been to England before.
“I had no idea that in a few years, I would be playing on the same team as Sergio.”
Iheanacho, who has four goals in the Premier League this season, also revealed how he honed his skills playing with balled up socks - as he couldn't afford a football.
"You see, when I was young, I loved playing football. But 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."
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