Football Crazy, Blogging Mad — Josephine Chukwunonye

Josephine’s reaction to reading this blog. The self-deprecation continues. (Michael Chow-USA Today Sports)

Ask anyone that knows me, they will tell you that I am the biggest football fan you will ever meet, so this one will be fun. Strikes, spares (another word for a substitute), turkeys (another word for the over-payed players), I know it all.

Josephine Chukwunonye — why does Wikipedia love giving me these complicated names? — is a Nigerian football player in the defender position. But before she became an international athlete, she was selling bananas on the busy market streets of Lagos, Nigeria. Her mother, the owner of the fruit stand and with whom Josephine lived with in a one-room shack along with six others, would allow Josephine to keep ten cents of every dollar she earned to buy her football boots.
“It’s so loud you hear nothing. It smells bad — it smells like everything.”
Not sure if Josephine is talking about the marketplace or the women’s locker room here.
After successfully buying second-hand boots, at age 16, Chukwunonye started her career playing for Nigerian team, Pelican Stars before being signed by another Nigerian Team, the River Angels, in 2008. After seven years of commitment for them, she left the team for America in 2015 to play for Washington Spirit.
“I am excited to join the Washington Spirit family; it’s a thing of joy and a dream come true for me.”
Sadly, she was released from her contract in December of the same year. Way to have some Christmas spirit, Washington Spirit! 

Through hard work, strong performances at the 2011 and 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and maybe a bit of Christmas magic, Josephine was signed to Swedish team Vittsjö GIK in 2016.


“I am excited to join the Vittsjo family; it’s a thing of joy and a dream come true for me.”
…Sorry, I just had this weird feeling of deja vu.

Chukwunonye won “Player of the Game” in her first match for Vittsjö GIK. Unfortunately, after years of playing through pain, Josephine received the shattering news that she required surgery on her knee and that her team will not be re-signing her. 

For Josephine, this struck fear in her that she would be sent away to live in poverty once again. She wanted to prove to her community and her father that giving birth to a girl was not a failure. Her father even disapproved of Josephine playing football because he didn’t want her to start looking like a man. But let’s not vilify the man, it’s the world’s culture that needs evaluating if we feel strongly against this one way or the other.

Josephine’s career continued, as she was signed to a smaller Swedish club, Asarums IF, in February 2017. Josephine had this to say:
I am excited to join the Asarums family; it’s a thing of joy…
Whoops, sorry, force of habit, she actually said this:
“I want to return to the top. Asarum will be a good stop on the way there.”
Josephine is one of many players that work extremely hard to bring legitimacy, notability, and popularity to women’s football — an effort that seems, unjustly, twice as difficult for female players. Here’s hoping she will play to packed stadiums rather than the empty stands she played to in Nigeria.

See, Click Random can be serious for a fleeting moment.


Random Facts

· The national Nigerian team is nicknamed the Super Falcons.

· The Super Falcons have won the African Women’s Championship ten times out of twelve championships. That’s good, right?

· An image of an injured Josephine Chukwunonye appears on a Business Insider article regarding Nigeria’s economic recession. Are we to blame Josephine for the economic crash, or could they not find a more relevant image?

Did you play “Clicks to Hitler/Jesus”? Comment your scores.


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