Samuel Chukwedze stars as Villarreal B defeat Athletic Club B, 3-1

Villarreal’s second team took a big step forward in the Segunda B playoffs today, defeating Athletic Club B 3-1 at San Mamés. The match was goalless until added time in the first half, when Villarreal took the lead through a fine move by Raba—the keeper saved his shot, not once but twice, but Adrian Dalmau finished it off.

Villarreal’s second goal came shortly after halftime and was courtesy of young (turns 19 on Tuesday) Nigerian youth international Samuel Chukwedze. Samuel had already made his impression on the match in the first ten minutes, when he dribbled through—literally—half the Bilbao squad but hoisted his shot well over the crossbar from close range,but now—after Villarreal cleared the ball from a promising Bilbao attack, Manu Morlanes found Samuel breaking down the right, and it was off to the races. He went through the defenders—again—and this time put a grass-cutter just inside the far post.

He was involved again in the third goal, where Dani Raba showed his class by taking the pass, making room to shoot, and beating the keeper to the short side.

Athletic Club got a very soft penalty that should not have been awarded in the 81st minute, and one hopes that will not come back to haunt us. We had a couple of chances to score again, but it ended 3-1.

If you want to see the complete match on youtube, it is here .

Highlights are here.

And for those of you wanting to know more about Chukwedze, he was a member of Nigeria’s fine U-17 squad; he was supposedly going to sign with Arsenal but that fell through; he trained with one our youth teams and impressed us; we signed him in September 2017, supposedly to a five-year deal. His mum was in his official signing photo, which is always nice!

We apparently paid €500k for him. If we can hold this lead and progress to the next round, he may have paid us back already!!