Place of birth Port Harcourt, Nigeria Number 30 Height 1.76 m | Playing position 2014 Oeiras | |
 | ||
Full name Jesse Tamunobaraboye Sekidika Date of birth (1996-07-14) 14 July 1996 (age 20) Current team FK Napredak Kruševac (#30 / Forward) Date joined 2016 (FK Napredak Kruševac) | ||
Jesse Tamunobaraboye Sekidika (born 14 July 1996) is a Nigerian football forward who plays for Napredak Kruševac in the Serbian SuperLiga.
Contents
Club career
Born in Port Harcourt, Sekidika played at Leicestershire-based private boarding school Brooke House College. After impressing there, he trialed at Stoke City where he awed at the 2013 Keele Cup and caught the attention of Manchester United scouts who invited him to train at their Carrington training ground. However, due to the stringent requirement of a British work permit and not having a European Passport, Jesse could not be offered a contract at Stoke City or Manchester United.
Sekidika then joined in August 2014 the youth team of a club from the outkirts of Portuguese capital Lisbon, A. D. Oeiras, where he played in the first half of 2014–15 season, By then he had already been invited to the Flying Eagles, the Nigeria national under-20 football team. During last days of the 2014–15 winter-break, he was signed by Portuguese giants S. L. Benfica for their youth team. He was part of the Benfica squad that played in the 2014–15 UEFA Youth League in which Benfica reached the quarter final. He made six appearances and scored once for Benfica in the second-half of the 2014–15 Portuguese youth league.
In June 2015 his contract with Benfica expired, and Portuguese side Marítimo, Norwegian Viking FK, Swedish AIK and one Austrian club were racing to sign him. However, in the winter-break of the 2015–16 season, after successful trials, he was along Bohdan Sichkaruk, were the foreign reinforcements of Serbian side FK Napredak Kruševac. He played the second-half of the 2015–16 Serbian First League season in which Napredak finished as champion and gained promotion to the Serbian top-flight, the SuperLiga.