The Victor Osimhen story: His difficult childhood in Nigeria and the 15 minutes that saved career

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Victor Osimhen had a quarter of an hour to prove himself.

It was 2014, he was 15 and playing for Ultimate Strikers Academy, a youth team based in Lagos. Or rather, he wasn’t playing: he had just been dropped from their team and was trying to figure out what to do next.

Then a scout called Shira Ayila — brother of former Nigeria international Ayila Yussuf — who had watched Osimhen play and saw something in the tall, gangly forward, invited him to take part in some mass trials for the under-17 national team.

The trials were in Abuja, the nation’s capital and more than 300 miles away. Osimhen — who scored for Nigeria in their AFCON opener yesterday, a 1-1 draw with Equatorial Guinea — had never even left Lagos before, and certainly couldn’t afford a plane ticket. So he and five others squeezed into Ayila’s car and drove for 10 uncomfortable hours to get there.

There were hundreds of hopefuls at the trials, so many that each player was only given short games of 15 minutes to show what they could do. Emmanuel Amunike, a former Barcelona forward and a key member of Nigeria’s 1996 Olympic gold medal-winning team, was the coach and the man who had to sift through all of these players to find some gems. The purpose of these mass tryouts was to put together a team for the Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations and the Under-17 World Cup, held in Niger and Chile respectively the following year.

Osimhen did brilliantly. He scored twice in his 15 minutes. But with all this other talent stretching out as far as the eye could see before him, Amunike wasn’t particularly impressed. He seemed to agree with that Ultimate Strikers coach that there wasn’t anything notable about Osimhen and wasn’t going to even bother taking a closer look at the lanky, skinny striker. But someone — accounts differ as to whether it was an assistant coach, or even the team doctor — had a word.

“I told them, ‘I didn’t see much’,” says Amunike. “But my staff came to me and said, ‘Coach, that boy in the green jersey…’. So I said, ‘Let’s see him again’. The next day, I took my time to watch him. And apart from his football abilities, I liked his character: the hunger, the desire, he was a player that was fighting. That’s how he came into the team.”

If it was Osimhen’s play and physical attributes that caught the attention of his coaches, it was Osimhen’s brain that Amunike liked. “I was not much interested in the aspect of how he played. I was more interested in the intelligence of the player.”

He was top scorer with four goals in five games at the Under-17 AFCON, but it was at the World Cup in Chile where he made his name. Osimhen scored in every Nigeria game, finishing with the Golden Boot (10 goals from six matches) as his side won the whole tournament.

It’s the opening game that Amunike holds in his memory.

“The first game in any tournament is important,” he says. “The first game defines what the team looks like and gives the confidence of the players for the next games. The game against USA where he scored was key for the team and key for himself.”

Osimhen scored the crucial second goal against a U.S. team that featured Christian Pulisic (and his cousin, Will Pulisic, in goal), a perfect example of a raw but talented player: the first touch nearly loses him the ball, but the second is an exceptional left-footed finish off the post to make it 2-0.

Osimhen scoring past the U.S.’s Will Pulisic during the Under-17 World Cup (Martin Rose – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

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, it was a significant struggle to get even that far.

Olusosun is not the most salubrious area of Lagos.

It’s most notable for being the site of a rubbish dump, a vast landfill that pumps out toxic chemicals and unpleasant smells to the surrounding area.

That’s where Victor Osimhen is from. It’s always easy to romanticise the struggle of growing up in poverty when someone becomes successful, to almost fetishise the suffering because it ‘made’ them. Osimhen does not.

“When I think of Olusosun… this is not a place that offers you promises,” he told France Football a few years ago. He reiterated that sentiment in an interview with the Napoli official YouTube channel when he moved to Italy in 2020. “There’s not a lot of promise. Nobody would tell you they believe in you.”

In the Lagos-based newspaper Punch, journalist Abiodun Adewale described the area: “Olusosun receives up to 10,000 tons of garbage per day, a substantial portion of this is electronic waste from container ships. Toxic fumes are released from the site and chemicals are absorbed into the ground…’

Despite this, there are around a thousand homes around there and in one of them, Osimhen was born on December 29, 1998. He’s the youngest of seven siblings — Andrew, Samson, Gloria, Esther, Joy, Blessing and Victor — born to parents Christiana and Patrick.

When he was very young — even Osimhen himself says he doesn’t remember exactly when — his mother died, a devastating loss for young Victor. Then a few months later, his father lost his job. The kids had to do something to feed the family. Andrew, the eldest brother, sold newspapers by the roadside in Ojota, the neighbourhood next to Olusosun, getting up at 4am so he could go and collect the papers and be on the streets in time for rush hour.

When Osimhen was old enough, he would sell water to people in cars stopped in traffic on the new highway that had just been built nearby. He did essentially any job that he could. He collected water for people in the neighbourhood. He ran errands for them. He cut grass. He worked in a computer shop for a little while.

And then there was football. His dad wanted him to be a doctor, but young Victor had other ideas: he wanted to be Didier Drogba. His great aim was to one day be named African Footballer of the Year, an award the Chelsea legend won twice.

He and his brothers would play with scrunched-up water bottles instead of a ball. Because he was so much taller than most other boys his age, his older brother would think nothing of allowing him to play with them. He would sift through the mounds of garbage in the landfill to look for boots, trainers, or anything to play in. He has spoken of the joy he felt when he managed to find a pair that his sister would then fix up. One time, playing in the neighbourhood, he dislocated his shoulder after attempting an ambitious overhead kick.

His first club was Olusosun United, a youth team run by Paul Erikewe. Or, as Osimhen calls him ‘Baba’.

“Victor was around 10, maybe even younger than that,” says Erikewe from his home, still in Olusosun.

“He was very skilful. I had in that junior team three or four very good players — including his best friend, Sammy Olorunfemi. He’s still his best friend now. The similarity they had was that they hated losing. They were fighters.”

Osimhen playing for Nigeria in Lagos (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images)

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 moved to another youth team called Synergy Ultimate and, after that, to Ultimate Strikers. His path wasn’t linear. He could have been ignored, his potential not spotted. But then he got that chance at Amunike’s tryouts.

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 comes back to see me,” says Erikewe. “Whenever he’s around, the community stands up. He’s a hero in the community. He’s brought the name of Olusosun to the world. On December 29, it was his birthday: even when he wasn’t around, the community as a group had a big party, to celebrate.”

Kaveh Rezaei is an Iranian striker who has never played with Victor Osimhen. He’s back in his homeland with Sepahan after a modest spell in Europe. But his career will be inextricably linked with Osimhen’s because of 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.

In the end, he chose Bundesliga side Wolfsburg, partly because they were offering a quicker pathway to senior first-team football than the giants. “It has a quieter environment,” adds Olaf Rebbe, Wolfsburg sporting director at the time, when asked why he picked the German side. “He felt we meant everything in an honest and warm way, to make a pathway with him. He was 18, he was going away from home — he needed to feel this. We believed in him. Everyone liked him immediately — even the big players.”

He couldn’t sign for them until his 18th birthday at the end of 2016, but he went there a few times for some ‘trial’ training sessions. Osimhen held his own with Wolfsburg’s first-team players, including Julian Draxler and Ricardo Rodriguez. “They could see he was special,” says Rebbe.

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?

As it was, Osimhen officially joined Wolfsburg in January 2017, but things didn’t quite go to plan. He arrived with a slight knee injury, which hampered his progress. He was also played out of position, on the wing, nobody quite sure what to do with this talented but unrefined, gangly kid who had just arrived in Europe.

More problems came when he contracted malaria in Nigeria. He was in hospital for a month. That knocked him back significantly, and very nearly scuppered the next stage of 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 was talk of him going to Switzerland and Austria before a deal was agreed with the Belgian club Zulte Waregem. However, they were spooked by his knee and health problems and pulled out of the deal. Something similar happened with Club Bruges, who instead chose to spend €5million (£4.3m; $5.5m at current rates) on our old friend Kaveh Rezaei, who had scored 16 goals in 39 games for Charleroi the previous season.

That meant Charleroi needed a striker, and they struck a canny deal with Wolfsburg: they took Osimhen on loan, without a fee, and agreed a price of €3million for a permanent deal at the end of that season. A couple of days before the summer 2018 transfer window closed, they signed Osimhen, ignoring the medical red flags that the other clubs had baulked at.

Osimhen celebrates scoring for Charleroi (Bruno Fahy/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

And now, the Africa Cup of Nations with Nigeria? Despite their depths of talent, they have only won it once (2013) in the last two decades but with Osimhen leading them, they are as good a bet as any.

“Victor was always a player who smelled when something was going to happen,” says Rebbe. “You can call it intelligence or instinct. He’s hungry for goals, and you see it now with Napoli.“

And with Nigeria. He’ll have more than 15 minutes to prove himself this time.

(Top photos: Getty Images)