Kelechi Iheanacho has revealed how his football career commenced when he was just a boy.
The Manchester City striker would listen out for a whistle which would signal when training at the local primary school would start.
This all occurred when Kelechi was only eight or nine years old, and more than 10 years later, he finds himself playing for one of the biggest clubs in England.
“When you heard the whistle coming from the street, that meant it was football time. Real football," he recalled to The Players' Tribune.
“You see, when I was young, I loved playing football. But where I grew up in southern Nigeria, it was kind of like a ghetto. It was a tough place to be a kid. You had to work very hard to make a living there, and my family did not have the extra funds to buy a real ball.
“Most of my friends didn't have one either, so we would run around the streets and use whatever we could find to kick around. We would make balls out of socks, or sometimes we even used a balloon.
“So whenever we had a chance to train with a real club, and with real footballs, it was very exciting.
“Most people did not have cell phones or the Internet, so the club coaches would walk through the streets in our neighborhood blowing a whistle.
“That was the signal that it was time for training. You knew that if you wanted to train, you had to go outside and follow them to the primary school down the road."