25 Jul, 2018
Cheltenham's Mo Eisa is the League Two player of the month after hitting the 20 goal mark in his first season as a professional. Adam Bate caught up with the Sudan-born striker to find out how he has made the step up from part-time football looks so easy.
A crowd of 1,450 people at Morecambe's Globe Arena might not epitomise the glamour of the professional game, but for Cheltenham Town's Mohamed Eisa, those sights and sounds showed just how far that he had come. "I had never played in front of that many people before," he tells Sky Sports. "I wasn't used to looking up and seeing that many fans there."
Signed in the summer from Greenwich Borough, Eisa was seen back then as one for the future. The Isthmian League South is English football's eighth tier so it was no surprise when Cheltenham boss Gary Johnson made it clear the now 23-year-old striker would be unlikely to go straight into the team unless he had an outstanding pre-season.
Eisa did just that. He impressed immediately and then got off the mark in that debut game at Morecambe. Nineteen more goals have followed and in doing so he has become only the second man in history to score 20 goals in a Football League season for Cheltenham. Though the club are in the bottom half of the table, only Accrington's Billy Kee has scored more.
"I am over the moon," says Eisa as he reflects on the thrill of winning the League Two player of the month award for March. "Getting that goal in the first game really got me going. I thought it would be a big step up and I did not know what to expect, but I think I have handled it well. I have felt comfortable here right from the start."
Tales of players working their way up through the divisions are nothing new but Eisa's story is particularly unusual. Born in Sudan, he came over with his mother and younger brother at the age of nine to join his father in England. He did not play football until the age of 14 when he got involved with the Pro Touch academy in London. Even then it was once a week.
Source: Sky News
