It was raining goals on Saturday as a Nigerian, Ike Ugbo, netted a hat-trick for the Chelsea FC’s U18 team.
The England Youth team squad member started the new season on a promising note when his team dumped Norwich City in a five goal thriller. The match ended 4-1.
Chelsea’s U18 squad now has three points with the help of Ugbo who scored all his goals in the second half of the high tempo match.
The first goal of the game was scored at the 37th minute by Chelsea FC’s player, Ali Suljic, meanwhile, Ugbo, 16, scored his first goal and Chelsea’s second goal of the match when the Norwich goalkeeper carelessly released a ball he had earlier grabbed in the 48th minute. Ugbo’s team mate Christie Davies assisted his second goal which he netted from the corner of the box in the 59th minute. He also utilized the carelessness of the Norwich side in the 85th minute to score his third to make a hat-trick.
The head coach of the team, Joe Edwards, reflected afterwards on a pleasing start to the season.
“Norwich is always a difficult place to come and get a result so for us to start with a win here is really pleasing,” he told Chelsea’s official website.
“On top of the result, it was also a good performance because often Norwich can be a difficult opponent with the way they set up to stop us. I felt today they had several good players in their team and it was a good, competitive game.
“The first half was quite even but we kept working to our game plan, which was to switch the play often and attack them down the sides. I think the way we did that in the first half caught up with Norwich in the second half and we started to open them up a lot more.
“Seeing your front player get a hat-trick in the first game is obviously a big plus and we’ve asked Ike to see how close he can get to Tammy Abraham’s tally from last season. However, it wasn’t just about his goals today because he put in an incredible shift up front in quite hot conditions and I felt that approach spread throughout the team in the second half. We were constantly pressing and didn’t let them get a foothold in the game.”
Ugbo became a Chelsea player at the age of 10, and so far he has scored 11 goals in 18 games for the U18 youth team.
naij.com
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