Odunze the biggest man on campus with Crown Legacy FC

STEVE GOLDBERG | THE CHARLOTTE POST

At 6 foot 7, Crown Legacy goalkeeper Chituru Odunze has the length and agility to be a force with the MLS Next Pro side.

When you first see Chituru Odunze warming up on the pitch for the Crown Legacy, the thought is that he showed up at the wrong arena.

A muscular 6-foot-7, Odunze looks more an NBA forward than a soccer player.  

A soccer goal is 192 square feet, about the size of a master bedroom before Charlotte’s mini-mansion surge, but it looks a lot smaller when a keeper with the height and wingspan of Odunze is guarding the gate.

Just ask Toronto FC II, who were tasked with getting the ball past him last Friday night. Even with a man advantage for two-thirds of the match, it took them until the 83rd minute to do that, much to the credit of the Crown Legacy who were always the better team through the night.

But the Canadian side would have snuck out of Charlotte with a win except for the blistering equalizer scored by Joao Pedro in added time to secure the draw. It marked the seventh time this season that the league-leading Legacy (16-4-4) had come from behind to win or draw.

As is the system for MLS Next Pro, all draws include a penalty kick shootout to award an extra point. After Nikola Petkovic’s kick was saved and Toronto scored their first attempt, the Legacy was behind once again and needed something big. Josue Rodrigues, David Poreba, and Jacob Williams would slot their kicks for the Crown and the tree became a forest as Odunze dived to his left, to his right, to his right again, blocking the next three Toronto attempts to claim the point.

Carolina born; Commonwealth bred

Odunze was signed in early August from Leicester, now in the English Championship Division after being relegated last season. There’s a lot of what some would call coincidence in his life, not the least of which is the fact that he was born in North Carolina.

His parents hail from Nigeria. His father is a retired chemist and university lecturer. His mother is a family physician, and it was her studies that had the family in Raleigh when Odunze was born. His older sister is now a doctor as well and his older brother is completing medical studies.

“My parents have an unbelievable work ethic, and they value education very highly, which is something I have taken from them,” Odunze told The Athletic last year.

He is now more than three years into Open University courses in business management and Spanish.

Shortly after his birth, the Odunzes moved to England. At age 5, Chituru started playing soccer.

“I probably started playing as soon as I could walk, to be fair, because I was living in England, growing up in England,” Odunze said. “Football’s just the sport you play.”

Odunze was a field player in school and knocking around with friends. “I became a goalkeeper about a year before I joined Chelsea’s academy. Once I became a goalkeeper, football started to become real.”

He had joined the Chelsea Academy at age 9 but that was interrupted when the family moved to Calgary, Canada when he was 11. After playing locally, Odunze spent a couple of years in the Vancouver Whitecaps youth system. Graduating from high school at 16, he moved back to England to join Leicester City in 2019, where he played with the club’s U18 and U21 teams.

A matter of destiny

“I’m a big believer in things happening for a reason,” he said. His name, Chituru, comes from a dialect of Igbo, the language of the Ebonyi. “That’s the tribe my parents are from in Nigeria. It means “God’s decree,” it’s like God’s plan almost, so I feel as if a lot of things in my life and my career have been for a reason.

“I don’t think you can write a story of my being born in North Carolina and then coming back 20 years later to progress my career, almost full circle, so definitely that’s for a reason and not by chance.”

Played for the USA

Perhaps it was also for a reason that teammates on the U.S. FIFA U17 World Cup squad included two other North Carolina natives in Greensboro’s Gianluca Busio and Cary’s Adam Armour, an original Charlotte FC player who scored the team’s first-ever goal last season.

“Me and Adam Armour were really close on that team,” Odunze says. Also on that squad were current senior U.S. Men’s National Team players Gio Reyna (Borussia Dortmund), Ricardo Pepi (PSV Eindhoven), and Joe Scally (Borussia Mönchengladbach).

He started two of three group matches at the U17 World Cup in Brazil, a draw with Japan and a loss to the Netherlands. The team did not advance. He’s also spent time with the junior national team at the U20 level. With having dual citizenship in Canada, that option is there as well.

In numerology, the number for Chituru is 1, which is also the traditional number for a starting goalkeeper. New to the club, it’s not the jersey he wears now but, as he said, things happen for a reason.
Asked if he’s still in the U.S. player pool, Odunze says that he hopes so. Turning 21 in October, with the world in his hands and at his feet, wearing the number 1 jersey for club and country could be his destiny.

For now, this chapter of the story will be written in Charlotte.

Crown Legacy will play New York Red Bulls II on Sept. 10.

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