'I love scoring goals': prolific Martinez is taking WSL by storm

After 10 strikes in 12 games in the second half of last season the West Ham forward is making good on a promise

- Tom Garry

Shekiera Martinez's 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. "I wanted to start, but when I told my mum, she firstly said: 'No, you won't play for long, you'll be like your sister,' Martinez recalls. "And so then I gave her a promise that I would play for longer than my sister."

Sixteen years later, the West Ham striker has certainly kept that promise. After progressing through her local boys' team, playing for Eintracht Frankfurt for six years and thriving at youth level for Germany, Martinez most recently collected the Women's Super League's 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.

No wonder the 24-year-old has a spring in her step at West Ham's 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's pre-season work - "I'm sore every day!" Martinez jokes, before adding that the intensity has felt really good - but how did the league's most in-form player at the end of last term spend her summer break?