Rashidi Yekini won a Golden Boot. Emmanuel Amunike won a cup. Zaidu Sanusi won a league title. Christy Ucheibe has just won her sixth consecutive Portuguese league championship at the age of 25, and the record she has set at Benfica belongs to her alone.
The conversation about Nigeria’s greatest footballers in Portugal has always been dominated by men and by the past. Rashidi Yekini’s Golden Boot at Vitória de Setúbal in 1993-94 is the stuff of legend. Emmanuel Amunike’s cup wins at Sporting CP in the mid-1990s are remembered with affection. Zaidu Sanusi’s league title and cup successes at FC Porto have given the modern generation a genuine standard-bearer. But all three, measured purely by trophies accumulated in Portugal, now trail one player: Christy Ucheibe, the 25-year-old Super Falcons midfielder who on Sunday helped Benfica beat Braga 3-1 to seal the 2025-26 Campeonato Nacional Feminino title, their sixth consecutive league championship.
Benfica’s title was won in dominant fashion. Thirteen wins and three draws from 16 games, unbeaten, with 54 goals scored and just 10 conceded, finishing with both the best attack and best defence in the division. Ucheibe featured in 10 of those league matches, adding five Champions League appearances and two domestic cup games to her campaign. Her role is multifaceted: deployed as a centre-back, as a defensive midfielder, and as the pivot through which Benfica’s transitions from defence to attack flow. Her passing accuracy consistently above 80%, her ball-winning that breaks up attacks before they develop, her composure under pressure. Week after week, the same qualities. Nigerian fans following women’s football and wanting to support the Super Falcons ahead of WAFCON can find a great starting offer at Bet9ja’s YOHAIG welcome page before the competition begins.
This is her sixth straight title since joining Benfica from Swedish side ASSi IF in February 2020. Six years. Six championships. In the same period, she has added multiple Portuguese Cup victories and guided Benfica to the UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-finals in 2023-24, the first Portuguese women’s club to reach that stage. The trophy collection no Nigerian player in Portugal, male or female, has ever matched.
The Comparison That Settles the Argument
Yekini remains one of Nigeria’s greatest footballers of all time and his 1993-94 Golden Boot with 21 goals was a season of individual brilliance. But Setúbal were a mid-table club, Yekini spent one primary season there, and team trophies eluded him entirely during his Portuguese stint. Amunike’s Sporting CP years brought a Portuguese Cup and a Super Cup, significant achievements at a major club, but two trophies and a short tenure. Sanusi at Porto has won a league title, two Portuguese Cups and two Super Cups, a genuinely impressive domestic record. Six consecutive league titles still surpasses all of them combined. Bet9ja’s women’s football betting page is available for fans who want to follow the Super Falcons and Ucheibe through the WAFCON competition this summer.
Why This Story Is Not Getting the Attention It Deserves
The honest answer is that women’s football in Nigeria receives a fraction of the coverage that men’s football does, and international women’s club football receives even less. Ucheibe has been quietly building one of the most remarkable trophy records of any Nigerian footballer anywhere in Europe, and the mainstream Nigerian football conversation barely registers it. A Nigerian male player winning six consecutive league titles at a European club would be a national story. Ucheibe has done exactly that, and most Nigerian fans could not tell you her name without prompting.
That is changing, slowly. Benfica’s historic Hexacampeonato will generate coverage. The Super Falcons’ WAFCON campaign in Morocco this summer will bring women’s football back into the national conversation. And Ucheibe, who is only 25 with years of dominance still ahead of her, will keep winning. She has already surpassed the men who came before her in Portugal. The next milestone is whether she can lead Benfica deep into the Champions League again, and whether Nigeria’s football culture can catch up with what she has quietly been building. Those following Nigerian women’s football into WAFCON can find all the latest through FootballInNigeria.com.ng’s Bet9ja partner page.
📌 Did You Know?
- Benfica’s six consecutive Campeonato Nacional Feminino titles from 2019-20 to 2025-26 represents the longest unbroken title run in the history of Portuguese women’s football, a dynasty that Ucheibe has been part of for all but the first of those championships.
- Rashidi Yekini, who Ucheibe has now surpassed in terms of Portuguese trophies, won the Golden Boot at the 1994 FIFA World Cup with four goals, making him the only Nigerian to win a World Cup Golden Boot in the tournament’s history.
- Emmanuel Amunike, another player Ucheibe has surpassed, scored the winning goal for Nigeria against Zambia at the 1994 AFCON final in Tunisia, one of the most iconic goals in Super Eagles history, and went on to win the 1996 Olympics gold medal in Atlanta.
- Benfica’s 2023-24 UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final run, in which Ucheibe played a key role, was the first time any Portuguese women’s club had advanced to that stage of the competition, marking a significant milestone for Portuguese women’s football on the European stage.
- Ucheibe joined Benfica in February 2020 from ASSi IF, a Swedish women’s football club, meaning she made the transition from Scandinavia to Portugal at a young age, a pathway that reflects the broader trend of African women’s footballers developing through smaller European leagues before reaching major clubs.
- The Super Falcons, Nigeria’s senior women’s team, are scheduled to compete at WAFCON 2026 in Morocco, the same country where the men’s AFCON was held in 2025, giving Nigerian football a major women’s international tournament to follow in the second half of 2026.
- Zaidu Sanusi, the FC Porto left-back also mentioned in the Nigeria-Portugal comparison, is one of the Super Eagles’ most consistent performers and has won league titles, Portuguese Cups and Super Cups during his time at the club, making him the best-decorated male Nigerian in Portuguese football history — though he now trails Ucheibe overall.
