It is a surprise that this year Juventus is not at the top of the table in Serie A. Because this
time Napoli has surprised everyone with its stellar performances. To be more specific,
we can say that all credit goes to the Nigerian star Victor Osimhen.
He might be the top goal scorer of the league or earning £6,000,000 per year.
But this wasn’t always the case. In fact, his early days were full of
struggling stories. From having no football shoes to getting rejection by two clubs,
here is Osimhen’s rags-to-riches story that will blow your mind.
Well, losing your loved ones is painful. And many cannot recover from such trauma. You’ll
be shocked to know that Victor Osimhen was small when he lost his mum. In an interview,
he said that it was the month of October and the year was not known to him.
As he was trying to come out of this sad news, three months later, his father lost his job. As
a result, it was really hard for the family who then lived in poverty. It was definitely
a tough road. And from an early age, he was on his own and had to work from a tender age.
Many footballers were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Andre Pirlo’s
father had a metal trading company while Al-Saadi Gaddafi’s father was
a dictator. But for Osimhen, luxury wasn’t written in his early destiny.
His brother sold sports newspapers, his sister oranges in the street and he bottled water in
Lagos in the middle of the traffic. They had to survive so they stuck together. Moreover,
In the evening, they were all together and gathered the money on the table. And
gave everything to their big sister, who then made food and organized everything.
That’s a real struggle. And even more inspiring is that the Napoli
star achieved all this, despite having no professional gear in his growing days.
Victor might be wearing Nike Zoom Mercurial Vapor 15 now to dribble past defenders. But there was
a time when this luxury was a rare commodity as he had to look for shoes in a refuse dump.
Where he grew up, people lived on the other side of an open dump. With his friends, he went there
every Friday or Sunday to find crampons and shoes. Victor told that he stayed there a long time.
“We were looking for crampons. Sometimes you see, you found yourself with a Nike on the
right foot and then you start looking for the other foot … And finally, you find the
left foot and it’s a Reebok! My sister patched everything up and it was good. It was survival.”
Well, Darwin rightly said the survival of the fittest! But
finding new shoes was not the only challenging situation in his life.
Osimhen first made the headlines after his superlative showing for Nigeria’s U-17 side
at the 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Chile where he won the Golden Boot and Silver Ball awards.
And then his first entry into big football was when he joined Wolfsburg in 2017. Injury
hampered his progress at Wolfsburg casting doubts over his ability;
this prompted the German side to put him up for sale. In a bid to get a new club, he had
trials at Zulte Waregam and Club Brugge both teams were not convinced of his talents. 2 rejections.
Possibly because of a virus. Guess what? It wasn’t COvid-19.
Listen carefully. Osimhen struggled for game time in Germany, with injuries and a bout of malaria
affecting his form. Wolfsburg was a disaster and 2 rejections completely shattered his confidence.
So, in 2018, he joined the Belgian club Charleroi on a season-long loan deal.
His stint in Belgium was a decent one. And after scoring a goal in a game,
he said to BBC that he had found his happiness back. But that happiness
wasn’t for a long time. Soon, he lost another integral member of his family.
His father was his role model. And a source of emotional sharing. As a child who didn’t
experience the love of his mother, he was close to his father. But In late May 2020,
Elder Patrick Osimhen died and the Super Eagles striker remained in his native country,
Nigeria for a very long time to mourn his father.
But he had made up his mind that he would further work hard to make his
deceased father proud. And what came next was certainly a proud moment for his dead parents.
In 2020, Napoli announced the signing of Osimhen, for a club-record fee of €70 million potentially
rising to €80 million with add-ons, making him the most expensive African transfer at that time.
Three months later, he scored his first goal for the club in a 4-1 win against Atlanta.
Upon scoring, he held up a shirt calling for the ending of police brutality in his home country.
For Osimhen, it was sad his parents weren't around to witness his amazing
achievement of becoming one of the world’s best players this year
He deserves to spend his luxurious days. Especially after seeing a harsh past. In
Europe’s top five leagues - the English Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1, and the
Bundesliga – only Haaland, with 26 goals, has scored more than Osimhen this season.
His form has been integral in Napoli’s remarkable season and the team looks likely to become the
Italian champion, leading Serie A by 18 points. It would only be the third title in Napoli’s
history and the first since Diego Maradona led the club to league glory in the 1989-90 season.
And it will be an honor for Osimhen to repeat the legacy of the great legend Maradona.
Osimhen’s journey is a lesson for everyone that you need to strive hard to achieve excellence.
What do you think about his struggle? Is it inspiring? Do let me know in the comments below.