Victor Osimhen had a quarter of an hour to prove himself.
In 2014, he was 15 years old and playing for the Ultimate Strikers Academy, a youth team founded in Lagos. Or rather, he wasn’t playing: he had just been kicked off his team and was thinking about what to do next. .
Then a scout named Shira Ayila, brother of former Nigerian foreigner Ayila Yussuf, who had seen Osimhen play and noticed the tall, lanky striker, invited him to participate in mass tryouts for the U-17 national team.
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The tests took place in Abuja, the country’s capital, more than 500 kilometers away. Osimhen – who scored for Nigeria yesterday in his first AFCON match, a 1-1 draw with Equatorial Guinea – had never left Lagos before and, in fact, was unable to travel by plane. ticket. So he and five other people snuck into Ayila’s car and drove for an uncomfortable 10 hours to get there.
There were a lot of customers at the tryouts, so small that each player only allowed short 15-minute games to show what they could do. Former Barcelona striker and key member of the Nigerian team that won the Olympic gold medal in 1996, Emguyuel Amunike, the coach and the guy who had to vet every player for gems. The aim of these big elections is to form a team for the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations and the U-17 World Cup, which will be held in Niger and Chile respectively the following year.
Osimhen did it brilliantly. He scored two goals in his 15 minutes. But with all those other talents stretching out before him, Amunike isn’t exactly impressed. He seemed to agree with the Ultimate Strikers trainer that there’s nothing remarkable about Osimhen and he wouldn’t even bother to take a closer look at the lanky, skinny striker Array. But someone — opinions differ as to whether he’s an assistant coach or even the team doctor — he spoke.
“I told them, ‘I didn’t see much,'” Amunike says. But my staff came up to me and said, ‘Coach, this guy in the green jersey. . . ». So I said, ‘Let’s see. ‘” The next day I took my time to practice it. And in addition to his footballing ability, I liked his character: hunger, desire, he’s a player who fights. That’s how they handed it over to the team.
While it was Osimhen’s play and physique that caught the attention of his coaches, it was Osimhen’s brain that attracted Amunike. “I’m not really interested in the way he played. I’m more interested in the intelligence of the player.
He was the top scorer with four goals in five games at the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations, but it was at the World Cup in Chile that he made the decision. Osimhen scored in each and every game for Nigeria, completing the Golden Boot (10 goals in six games) as his team won the entire tourcallnt.
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It’s the initial attack that Amunike remembers fondly.
“The first match of a tournament is important,” he said. The first match defines what the team looks like and gives the players confidence for the upcoming matches. The match against the United States where he scored a key goal for the team and for himself.
Osimhen scored the second goal against an American team that had Christian Pulisic (and his cousin, Will Pulisic, in goal), the best example of a raw but talented player: the first touch almost made him lose the ball, but the moment was a remarkable left-footed shot to the post that made it 2-0.
But there’s also the hat-trick against Australia in the round of 16, featuring two phenomenal Thierry Henry-esque finishes from the left. There’s the header against Brazil in the quarter-finals, handily losing his marker, current Real Madrid defender Eder Militao. And there’s the opener in the final against Mali, taking advantage of some admittedly generous marking to thump home an emphatic finish.
“You don’t often see a player who is very tall but who can manage everything — his technical ability, his coordination,” says Amunike. “He has everything. The technical skill with the ball is something else. To have a player with that type of height… he has the combination of everything.”
And yet, getting this far is a struggle of enormous proportions.
Olusosun is the healthiest domain in Lagos.
It is best known for being a landfill, a large landfill that discharges poisonous chemicals and unpleasant odors into the surrounding area.
That’s where Victor comes from, Osimhen. Es easy to romanticize development in poverty when someone succeeds, to almost fetishize suffering because that is what “created” it. Osimhen does not.
“When I think of Olusosun. . . it’s not a position that makes you promises,” he told France Football a few years ago. He reiterated this sentiment in an interview with Napoli’s official YouTube channel when he moved to Italy in 2020. “There are a lot of promises. No one would tell you they believe in you.
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In the Lagos newspaper Punch, journalist Abiodun Adewale described the area: “Olusosun receives up to 10,000 tonnes of waste a day, a major component of which is e-waste from container ships. Toxic fumes are released and chemicals are absorbed into the earth. . . “
Despite this, there are about a thousand houses in the surrounding area and in one of them, Osimhen was born on December 29, 1998. He is the youngest of seven siblings – Andrew, Samson, Gloria, Esther, Joy, Blessing and Victor – born to parents. Christiane and Patrick.
When he was very young (even Osimhen himself says he does not know exactly when) his mother died, a devastating loss for young Victor. Then, a few months later, his father lost his job. The young people had to do anything to feed the family. Andrew, the eldest brother, used to sell newspapers on the side of the road in Ojota, the neighboring community of Olusosun, getting up at four in the morning to collect the newspapers and be on the street in time for rush hour.
When Osimhen was old enough, he sold water to other people in cars stopped in traffic on the new road they had just built nearby. He did pretty much every painting he could. I was going to fetch water for the other people in the neighborhood. I ran errands for them. He mowed the lawn. He painted for a while in a computer store.
And then there’s football. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but young Victor had other ideas: he wanted to be Didier Drogba. His big goal is to one day be named African Footballer of the Year, an award the Chelsea legend won twice.
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He and his siblings played with crumpled water bottles instead of a ball. Since he was much taller than most other children his age, his older brother didn’t hesitate to let him play with them. I rummaged through the piles of trash in the landfill, looking for boots, sneakers, or anything else to play with. She spoke of the joy she felt when she managed to locate a pair that her sister later repaired. One day, while playing in the neighborhood, he dislocated his shoulder after making an ambitious aerial kick.
His first club was Olusosun United, a youth team run by Paul Erikewe. Or, as Osimhen calls him ‘Baba’.
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“Victor is about 10 years old, maybe even younger,” says Erikewe from his home in Olusosun.
“He’s very skilled. He had 3 or 4 very smart players on that youth team, plus his most productive friend, Sammy Olorunfemi. He remains her most productive friend now. The similarity they had to the fact that they hated to lose. They were fighters.
Erikewe doesn’t make much of an attempt to romanticise Osimhen’s upbringing either. “The family was a bit rough. When he was young, that affected him a lot. Those of us in the community, especially me and one of my sons, we assisted him, and encouraged him.”
From there, Osimhen joined another youth team called Synergy Ultimate, and later Ultimate Strikers. Its trajectory is not linear. They may have simply ignored you, their perspective may have gone unnoticed. But then he was given that chance in Amuni’s selections.
These days, though his family no longer live there (his father died in 2020 and his siblings moved) Osimhen is still a hero in Olusosun. Banners hang from the houses celebrating Napoli’s Serie A title win from last season. People gather to watch his games. And whenever he’s in Lagos, he goes back to visit the old neighbourhood.
“He’ll come back to me,” Erikewe says. Every time he’s there, the net stands up. He’s a hero on the net. He brought the so-called Olusosun to the world. December 29 was his birthday: even when he wasn’t there, the network as an organization threw a big party to celebrate.
Kaveh Rezaei is an Iranian striker who has never played under Victor Osimhen. He is back in the Sepahan after a modest stint in Europe. But his career will be inseparable from Osimhen’s due to a few weeks in August 2018.
After the goals at that incredible Under-17 World Cup in 2015, it didn’t take an expert scout to spot Osimhen’s potential. Plenty of big European clubs were in for him. Barcelona, Ajax, Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan and Arsenal were all credited with an interest. Andrew, his brother, tells of fielding calls from many English clubs, trying to persuade him to persuade Victor to choose them. Arsene Wenger spoke to Osimhen on the phone.
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In the end he chose Bundesliga side Wolfsburg, partly because they presented a quicker route to the first team than the giants. “It’s a calmer atmosphere,” added Olaf Rebbe, then Wolfsburg’s sporting director, when asked why he chose the German team. “He felt that we were looking to say everything in a fair and warm way, to forge a path with him. He is 18 years old, he is leaving home, he needed to feel that. We believed in him. ” . . . Everyone immediately liked it, even the big players.
He wasn’t able to sign for them until he turned 18 at the end of 2016, but he went there several times for “trial” training. Osimhen stuck to his guns with Wolfsburg’s first-team players, bringing in Julian Draxler and Ricardo Rodríguez. They saw that it was special,” the rabbi says.
Wolfsburg were looking at another promising young striker around the time. Another forward with an impressive goal record for someone so young. But in the end, they went for Osimhen because he was 18 months older, a little closer to the finished product, and they knew him a little better. Who knows how history may have diverged if they had signed Erling Haaland instead?
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As things stand, Osimhen officially joined Wolfsburg in January 2017, but things didn’t go as planned. He arrived with a minor knee injury, which slowed his progress. He also played out of position, on the wing, without anyone knowing. what to do with this talented but raw and lanky boy who had just arrived in Europe.
Other disorders arose when he contracted malaria in Nigeria. He was hospitalized for a month. This set him back significantly and nearly derailed the next step in his career.
A change in personnel at Wolfsburg effectively killed off his time there. Rebbe left and Jorg Schmadtke, now with Liverpool, became their sporting director. He did not see a thrilling talent who had dominated a youth World Cup and in whom the club were emotionally invested — instead, he saw a young kid who had made 16 appearances over 18 months without scoring a goal. With 4K, crystal clear hindsight, it’s easy to mock those at Wolfsburg who didn’t believe in him, and Schmatke has since said he regrets the decision, but it wasn’t an illogical one at the time.
There, he was informed of his departure to Switzerland and Austria before reaching an agreement with Belgian club Zulte Waregem. However, spooked by their knee and fitness issues, they pulled out of the deal. Something similar happened with Club Brugge, who opted to spend £5 million (£4. 3 million; £5. 5 million at the current price) for our old friend Kaveh Rezaei, who had scored 16 goals in 39 games for Charleroi last season.
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That meant Charleroi needed a striker, and they struck a shrewd deal with Wolfsburg: they loaned Osimhen, free of charge, and agreed a €3m value for a permanent contract at the end of that season. A few days before the summer of 2018 with the transfer window closed, they signed Osimhen, ignoring medical warning signs that other clubs had hesitated about.
He scored his first senior goal in his first start for Charleroi, an audacious backheel against Beveren, and would go on to find the net 20 times from 36 games that season. And this is where that canny initial agreement really paid off: at the end of the season, Charleroi activated the €3million purchase price, despite Wolfsburg making a vain attempt to keep him, and then immediately flipped him for €15m to Lille. As nifty moves in the transfer market go, it’s up there with the niftiest.
The rest of the story you probably already know. The 18 goals in Ligue 1 for Lille. The €70million transfer to Napoli. The Scudetto and the Capocannoniere in 2023. The African Footballer of the Year award, the one he said he always wanted, the first Nigerian to win it since Nwankwo Kanu in 1999.
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And now, the Africa Cup of Nations with Nigeria? Despite their immense talent, they’ve won it once (2013) in the past two decades, but with Osimhen at the helm, they’re as smart a gamble as any.
“Victor was a player who sensed when something was going to happen,” Rebbe says. “You can call it intelligence or instinct. He’s hungry for goals, and now you’re seeing that with Napoli.
This time I’ll have more than 15 minutes to get through it.
(Top photos: Getty Images)