Unless you’re Cristiano Ronaldo playing against the West Didsbury & Chorlton U12s or you’re playing FIFA on easy level, nobody scores ten goals in a single football match. At least not until now.
Chido Obi-Martin was born in November 2007; the gradual influx of young football players into the 2000s is still immensely disheartening. Earlier in the season, Mikel Arteta called Chido Obi-Martin into the first squad at Arsenal, and Ian Wright publicly praised him.
Following his performance in a UEFA Youth League match against Sevilla, Gunners icon Wright commented on his podcast, “Wrighty’s House,” “It’s Chido Obi-Martin, he’s 15, honestly he’s like 6 foot 2 he looks really quick.”
The thing which I saw with him and what I noticed yesterday was, it was his first game at that level, and you could see it.
“What I found with that game is that we couldn’t get ourselves into that final third and then hold and link the play and bring other people into the game.
We couldn’t do it, simply because our centre-forward was thrown in, and I think for the right reasons, he’ll learn a lot from that.”
The striker registered a hat-trick for Arsenal U18s in a 4-0 victory over Southampton in September, but that was nothing compared to his exploits against Liverpool.
As Arsenal dispensed with the very concept of ‘chill’ by thrashing their rivals 14-3, Obi-Martin wasn’t sated by a triple hat-trick. No siree. He just had to record double figures in gloriously greedy fashion.
What’s striking is how the goals were scored; at least three of them saw Obi-Martin race from the left flank, open his body and sweep an imperious shot past the helpless Liverpool goalkeeper.
He wasn’t born when Thierry Henry played for the Gunners, but we’d bet our life savings on Obi-Martin studying the club’s greatest-ever goalscorer. The evidence suggests he’s a quick learner.
Also featured is a bullet penalty, clinical header, a pair of opportunistic strikes, one thumping finish and a minimum of two that saw Obi-Martin dance through the defence like a world champion ballerina before leaving the goalkeeper on his bottom. Great stuff.
Born in Glostrup, Denmark, the striker is eligible to represent the Danish side and has already scored seven goals in nine outings for the nation’s under-17 side. Coach Jesper Mikkelsen has already spoken out about his talent.
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“When you look at ‘Chido’, he doesn’t look like someone who hasn’t turned 16 yet,” Mikkelsen said. “First of all, he has a physique that is really advantageous as a football player.
“He is big and strong, but he is also reasonably agile. He is good at sticking to the game, but he is actually also good at challenging and dribbling himself.
“So of course that makes him interestin now here and in the long run, because it is interesting to see how much this physique can carry him forward towards a breakthrough on the big stage.
“Right now he is really dominant because of his physique, but I don’t think that is the only reason.
“His greatest characteristic and challenge is that he really wants to score goals. When I say it can also be a disadvantage, I mean that he can sometimes play his own game.
“He is very searching for chances, where he forgets that you also have to play with the others.”
After his eye-popping 10 goals against Liverpool, it won’t be too long before Obi-Martin attains the kind of status that means even your football-allergic nan is aware of him.
