He Was Once Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s Teammate But Has Two Daughters In Nigeria’s Super Falcons Now... Who?

“I was tightly marked. I had those leeches from the newspaper on me, and Djurgården dominated for the first twenty minutes. We’d just bought in a guy from Nigeria,” Zlatan Ibrahimovic narrated in his biography, I Am Zlatan by David Lagercrantz.

A 5-time capped former Super Eagles striker, the attacker reigned in the early 2000s and graced the pages of sports newspapers in Nigeria. As a kid, I knew him for being a regular feature on Complete Sports’ Monday column of Nigerian players abroad. He scored every almost week in Sweden then, and was a big hit at Julius Berger.

Strongly built and huge, he wore an all-back hairstyle that reigned amongst Nigerian footballers back in the day (Kanu still has his… Aghahowa tried it🤡 and Sango didn’t feel jealous … Peter Utaka also had it and yes, J. J Okocha and Christian Obodo).

“Peter Ijeh was his name, and he had a reputation as a brilliant goal-scorer. He would lead the league in goal scoring the following year. But at this point he was still in my shadow. Well, who wasn’t?” Ibra further narrated. Well! Ibra made Sweden’s World Cup squad and Ijeh never managed to achieve that with the Super Eagles.

Ijeh played for many teams in Sweden and also had stints in Denmark before going on to study at Gothenburg University and the Swedish Football Federation. He has a UEFA A licensed certificate and currently works as a coach with Vargarda IK in the Swedish second division.

Ijeh’s two daughters, Evelyn and Josephine play for the female team of BK Hacken in the Swedish top division. The sisters have been invited to the Super Falcons as part of a squad of 26 players for the Austrian camp ahead of the Falcons’ upcoming crunch fixtures.

If they feature for the Falcons, they may also be the first father and daughters to play for Nigerian teams. I doubt if there’s also any father-son appearance for the Super Eagles in history. We’ve seen brothers play, as in Sunday and Azubuike Oliseh, Nwankwo and Ogbonnaya Kanu, John and Peter Utaka, Finidi George and late Igeniwari George, and some others but never in history has a playing generation spanned between parents and their children.

Ijeh Snr. must be a proud father!