Bayern Munich’s Nigerian-born attacker, Joshua Orobosa Zirkzee is targeting a shirt with The Bavarians against Chelsea of England, as he seeks to be part of the team that wants to sink The Blues on their home ground in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League round of 16 fixture, megasportsarena.com reports.
Although The Blues will fancy their chances of making the best of home advantage to carry the day, Zirkzee is exuding confidence heading into Tuesday’s game, in London, but the 18-year-old lad will have to ward off pressure from senior strikers in his squad for him to get into action.
Such it is that Zirkee is for now only in the provisional list for Tuesday’s match, as The Bavarians’ boss, Hans-Dieter Flick named 19 of his wards for the game, with 17 of them outfield players, of which one will be dropped some 75 minutes to kick-off.
That puts Zirkzee up against Thomas Müller, Robert Lewandowski, Serge Gnabry and Philippe Coutinho in contention for a place in the starting 11 or on the bench, but recent form suggests a place for the Nigerian-born youngster, who was promoted to Bayern’s first team last summer.
That came on the strength of his stunning displays for their youth teams and he went on to justify his accelerated promotion by netting in two of his first tree senior team games, one of which was in the UCL, such that it has not been any surprising seeing him listed in the squad for each of their last nine matches in the German Bundesliga.
The former Feyenoord of Holland kid, who was born in the Dutch country, made his UCL debut against Tottenham Hotspur of England on December 11, when he got off the bench in the 86th minute to replace Ivan Perisiç, then returned home to score in back-to-back domestic league matches against SC Freiburg and VfL Wolfsburg.
All pointers are now suggestive that Zirkzee, who has also featured for Bayern in the DFB Pokal (German Cup), after landing at Allianz Arena in 2017, following spells with the youth teams of Spartaan, ADO Den Haag and Feyenoord, all in the country of his birth, could again gain from the absence of Perisiç, who was ruled out of the trip to West London due to injury.
The youngster, who has a Nigerian father and Dutch mother, said he is looking to Tuesday’s match to further make his mark with Bayern, where he is hoping to one day become their top striker and reliable goals scorer.
Zikzee added: “After I first trained with Bayern, I knew that’s who I wanted to join. I told myself, let me do three sessions – then I’ll decide if I’m good enough. They told me I have the quality, but also that they wanted to work on my conditioning, among other things. They’ve been true to their word. I want to become the main striker at Bayern – that’s always been my objective.”