Victor Capocannoniere
After waiting the better part of a generation, Napoli finally won only the third Serie A title in their history with their 1–1 draw with Udinese on May 4th. It’s a shame they could not set a new record as the first time to win the title with 6 games to spare after only managing a draw with Salernitana in Naples the week before when a win would have confirmed the win. Such is life — they then had to travel to Udine (near the border with Slovenia), their furthest away game, to win it.
Napoli have been absolutely sensational this season with new players like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (that is, Kvaradona) exploding onto the scene in only his first season in a big league and Andre Anguissa showing a new level (or was it always there?) from what was seen when he was at Fulham in the Premier League.
But it has been Victor Osimhen who has confirmed his status as a world star. Strikers who score goals reliably at the highest level are in short supply these days — if you start to name them, you probably won’t get past 5 or 7. After scoring 10 and 14 league goals in his first two seasons in Italy, he has delivered 23 league goals (and counting) this season (only one penalty), to lead the Capocannoniere race (4 goals more than Inter Milan’s Lautaro Martinez in second place). He has had his fair share of injury worries (perhaps due to his all action style) but this season has also been his career best in terms of availability — 28 games played of which he started 26 of them. His next best season was his one year in France’s Ligue 1 when he played 27 games and started 25 for Lille. There are still 4 games to play and he’s currently fit so this season should end up clear as his best ever.
Napoli have placed a king’s ransom on his head and the club’s President, Aurelio De Laurentiis, is a nightmare to deal with. So I won’t rule out him spending another season in Italy (Kalidou Koulibaly was forever leaving Napoli but de Laurentiis managed to never sell until he mugged Chelsea for a player clearly past his best), as much as it pains me to say as a United fan with faint hopes of him coming to Old Trafford. If he stays, it is not impossible that he finds an even higher level. For one thing, he’s working under Luciano Spalletti — the most underrated coach in European football — who has one of the best track records when it comes to working with strikers in Italy. Francesco Totti, Edin Dzeko and even Mauro Icardi all won the top scorer award when playing for him.
At the age of just 24, Victor Osimhen has all the time in the world to finish his career as Nigeria’s greatest ever striker.
It is therefore fitting that Nigerian newspapers have pulled their finger out and tried to add as much colour as possible to the backstory of this incredible talent. Who is Victor Osimhen and where on earth did he come from? What is it that gives him the bravery with which he plays the game?
The Cable has a long piece focusing on Olusosun, the unlikely community in Lagos where he grew up:
Olusosun community, to many residents of Lagos, is synonymous with an infamous landfill site that sprawled beside it. An eyesore that takes their waste but produces nothing than a belly-turning stench. An area so dim, its only brightness comes from the constant fire incinerating the mountain of rubbish dumped there.
Until Victor Osimhen blew up and became associated with the place, nothing else ever came to mind when I heard Olusosun other than the fact it was a giant dumpsite that sat as a monument to the failings of Lagos as a city — all that carbon and stench constantly in the air. And we all had to breathe it in because apparently it was a problem with no solution, as with so many other problems in Nigeria (until you go to another big city and realise that same problem does not exist there).
The landfill is a rolling hill of dirt, decay and dung that receives at least 10,000 tons more daily; its stretch claims over 40 acres of land, offering daily feeds for scavengers, flies and vermin.
I’m sure dozens of ‘proposals’ have been written to solve the problem and not a few people would have become very rich in the name of solving a problem that remains exactly as it was before they got paid for their solution. Perhaps many more will get rich solving it.
Victor’s story is a typical (and sad) one in poor communities where children are robbed of their childhood by the loss of a parent (in his case his mother) or just grinding poverty that forces them to start fending for themselves and siblings at the earliest age possible. Yet it is also a remarkable story of a community doing the work of raising a child who was one of them for no reason other than it being the thing you do. Whatever talents he showed, I doubt anyone could have foreseen where he has risen to today. Football would eventually prove to be his escape given that up to a certain point, you don’t need anything to play the game — any kind of ball on any kind of space will do, even without shoes.
And then this:
With over 4,000 players from all over the country awaiting to show their talent on the pitch of the FIFA Goal Project in Abuja, Amunike gave each group of players 30 minutes to make an impression.
However, when Osimhen’s group filed out, the coach was tired and waved them off the pitch after just 15 minutes.
Between that minute and the next, a football career that would be the envy of many seemed to have been snuffed out.
But a room of darkness cannot arrest the brightness of a golden hub. An assistant coach had noticed the doggedness and street-sharpened litheness of Osimhen during the drab match. He informed Amunike of the boy’s hunger. Osimhen was called for another round of trials, and he proved good enough to make the Golden Eaglets’ team that won the U17 World Cup in 2015.
It’s an incredible story but one that should never be romanticised. It could easily have gone any other way and he would have become no more than a statistic that is rolled up into some report somewhere about ‘Nigeria’s potential’.
I urge you to read the rest of the piece — it’s a good piece of reporting.
But the message of his story, at least for me, is that we should be alarmed that an incredible footballer like Victor could come out of one of the most neglected places in Lagos, Nigeria. What else are we missing? What other gems are notcoming out of there because there is no established pipeline for talent to get out of the place?
Or maybe things will just continue in the usual way where we leave it to Victor to set up a school in the community that does the work of the pipeline. One man against a landfill growing by 10,000 tonnes a day.
And hope for the best that another one turns up.