Africans in Europe: Samuel Chukwueze

The new Serie A season in Italy will get underway next weekend but Nigerian winger Samuel Chukwueze has long since get his goals for the new campaign.

The AC Milan speedster says he wants a vast improvement on last season’s form, to score more goals and help the club to regain the Scudetto they won three years ago.

It will be a second season in Italy for Chukwueze, who joined this time last year from Spain’s Villarreal in a 20-million euro move but struggled to set the Serie A alight.

“My mind was set only on Milan. My agent said to me, ‘hey look there’s this money …’ but I wasn’t interested. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere else,’ I told him. Then he gave up!

“The most important thing now is to believe in myself. I’m still young. I want to make it, I have to stay in Europe,” he said.

Milan finished runners-up to neighbours Inter last season and stat the new season with a new coach in Paulo Fonseca.

“He told me only one thing: ‘Samuel, I don’t want to see last year’s Chuk. I want the one from Villarreal”. And I said, “OK no problem’. It’s like I’m reborn. I’m a new player.”

Last season he made 12 league starts and scored once. He also got two goals in the Champions League, where Milan finished third in their group behind Borussia Dortmund and Paris St Germain.

“My most goals in a seaon is six (at Villarreal in the 2022/23 season). I wanj to better that.”

Chukwueze was very impressed from the beginning of his move with the atmosphere at Milan. “The most important thing is to have people who give you confidence. Milan is a family, not a team. We do everything together,” he explains. “We talk about life, even when things go wrong.”

The 25-year-old from Umahaia might not have followed football as a career.

“My mother didn’t want me to play. She used to say ‘football will never give you money’.”