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S<\/span>hekiera Martinez\u2019s family were sceptical when she told them, aged eight, she wanted to start playing football. She was one of four girls and a boy in her family, growing up in Germany, and one of her older sisters had by then given up the game. \u201cI wanted to start but when I told my mum, she firstly said: \u2018No, you won\u2019t play for long, you\u2019ll be like your sister,\u2019\u201d Martinez recalls. \u201cAnd so then I gave her a promise that I would play for longer than my sister.\u201d<\/p>\n Sixteen years later, the West Ham striker has certainly kept that promise. After progressing through her local boys\u2019 team, playing for Eintracht Frankfurt for six years and thriving at youth level for Germany, Martinez most recently collected the Women\u2019s Super League\u2019s Rising Star award for the 2024-25 season after a breakthrough second half of the campaign in which she scored 10 times in 12 WSL games.<\/p>\n No wonder the 24-year-old has a spring in her step as she sits down for an exclusive interview on a smart, black office chair at West Ham\u2019s Chadwell Heath training ground, having ended last season with back-to-back WSL player-of-the-month awards for March and April. Our conversation is happening in the middle of West Ham\u2019s pre-season work \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m sore every day!\u201d Martinez jokes, before adding that the intensity has felt really good \u2013 but how did the league\u2019s most in-form player at the end of last term spend her summer break?<\/p>\n \u201cI slept really long every day,\u201d she says. \u201cI think I needed it, just spending time with my family, walking the dog and doing nothing after the season because also with the change to [move to] England, it was really nice to do nothing and just chill.\u201d<\/p>\n Last season was life-changing for Martinez off the pitch as well as on it. She became a West Ham player in July 2024, signing a three-year contract, but could not immediately play in England. Martinez became eligible only once she had accumulated enough points for a visa under the governing body endorsement system used by the Football Association for international players, and assembled the points on loan in Germany\u2019s top division with Freiburg. In January, West Ham recalled her.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really quick,\u201d she says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t even say goodbye to everyone [at Freiburg] because I thought: \u2018I go back there.\u2019 I [had] always said my dream was to play in England one time. It came quicker than I thought. I was ready for the change and I was really excited.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Shekiera Martinez dribbles away from Chelsea\u2019s Keira Walsh.<\/span> Photograph: Tom Dulat\/The FA\/Getty Images<\/p>\n To say that recall worked out for West Ham and Martinez would be an understatement; she scored nearly a third of West Ham\u2019s goals for the season despite joining midway through the campaign, and ended up as the division\u2019s joint third-top scorer. She was one of only four players \u2013 along with Alessia Russo, Khadija Shaw and Elisabeth Terland \u2013 to reach double figures but played the fewest WSL games of the top 16 scorers.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, I was [surprised], to be honest,\u201d she says. \u201cI really had a lot of respect [for the WSL] \u2013 I didn\u2019t know it would go so well. The physicality is much harder here than in Germany, I think, [but] we have gym every day so I also got stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n Martinez earned a reputation for being a clinical goalscorer seven years ago, when she was the top scorer at the 2018 Under-17 European Championship with nine goals to help Germany finish as runners-up.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a 9, I love scoring goals,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not really thinking when I\u2019m playing football; it just happens on instinct. If it happens, I\u2019m happy, if not it\u2019s also OK for me. I really like the situation when I go one-v-one against the goalkeeper. Sometimes it\u2019s really hard because you have so much time to think.\u201d<\/p>\n Her love for the thrill of scoring goals is clear but she is not a diehard football-watching fan. She loves watching basketball \u2013 the professional player Leon Fertig is a good friend \u2013 on television but not football: \u201cI don\u2019t watch any football, unless my friends are playing, so I support my friends when they are playing. I just like playing more than watching.\u201d<\/p>\n Another pleasure is walking her dog, an eight-month-old toy poodle named Ruby, who was born just as Martinez moved to the WSL. \u201cI don\u2019t go into the city often so I\u2019m just with my dog in the parks, enjoying my quieter time,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re living behind a park so we thought: \u2018It\u2019s the right time to get a dog.\u2019 I love it. She\u2019s my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Moving the Goalposts<\/span><\/p>\n No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women\u2019s football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n If Martinez continues scoring at her recent rate, she will surely be unlikely to have the summer of 2027 at home with Ruby, because Germany may well come calling for the World Cup in Brazil, but she is not putting any pressure on herself for a senior call-up: \u201cIt would be a dream of course but I don\u2019t want to rush myself. I can\u2019t change anything, I\u2019ll just try to play my best and if they like it, they like it\u201d<\/p>\n In the much more immediate term, the WSL season looms on the horizon, with West Ham beginning their campaign away to Tottenham Hotspur on 7 September. After a ninth-placed finish the plan is to \u201cclimb up the table\u201d and Martinez says: \u201cIf we play like the last half of last season, we can be really good.\u201d<\/p>\n If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email moving.goalposts@theguardian.com<\/p>\n This is an extract from our free weekly email, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is back to its twice-weekly format, delivered to your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shekiera Martinez\u2019s family were sceptical when she told them, aged eight, she wanted to start playing football. She was one of four girls and a boy in her family, growing up in Germany, and one of her older sisters had by then given up the game. \u201cI wanted to start but when I told my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[8136,7524,1253,8138,529,8135,8137,7081,8139,3677,2187,418,8140],"class_list":{"0":"post-14508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-goals","9":"tag-ham","10":"tag-love","11":"tag-martinez","12":"tag-meet","13":"tag-scoring","14":"tag-shekiera","15":"tag-storm","16":"tag-striker","17":"tag-united","18":"tag-west","19":"tag-women","20":"tag-wsl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Get in touch<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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