Osimhen’s Napoli-Lagos Reality, Process & the Stuff of Dreams

In April 2007, legendary Nigerian Fuji musician, Wasiu Alabi Pasuma released a song titled ‘Napoli like Lagos’. Super Eagles forward Victor Osimhen was 8 at the time, still combing the streets of Africa’s most populous city in search of anything round.

Stories around Osimhen’s childhood mention how he hawked sachet water, sold newspapers and many other things inside Lagos traffic to support his parents. Survival, like it is for many people on the streets of the city, must have been difficult at the time.

At the heart of Lagos’ bubbly and bustling nightlife was the growth of Fuji music. It's highly unlikely that a kid born in the sprawling streets of the city would not have heard Pasuma at least once in his lifetime. Reggae music, known as ‘Galala’, Fuji, and hip-hop were the most prominent genres in the early 2000s. Pasuma had the ears of the streets and his rendition was accepted by many. When he sang Napoli Like Lagos, after one of his trips to the Italian city, he revealed the similarities between both worlds.

Regular travellers to Napoli have given similar comments about the busy, and buzzy nature of the city. In their words, it is indeed, like Lagos.

When Pasuma, now 55, released that song sixteen years ago, he'd never have imagined that an eight-year-old boy from the city he compared Napoli with will bring back the city’s most glorious days in football.

On Sunday in the Serie A’s star fixture of the week, Juventus hosted Napoli in Turin. The Old Lady, eyeing a European triumph in the form of the Europa League rested some of their finest players. The Italian giants just a few years ago, were serial champions in Italy as they made the league theirs time and again winning it nine times on the trot. Times-are-a-changin. In the last two seasons, both Inter Milan and AC Milan, the historic pair from the capital have won the Scudetto.

Napoli under eccentric owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis have vied for the Serie A on many occasions without success. They've had some of Europe’s finest players in the last ten years but have always come short of the title they last won more than three decades ago. The last time Napoli won the Serie A, they had one of the greatest players of all time, Diego Maradona wearing their colours. Napoli’s stadium is rightly named after the Argentine football legend.

This season, Napoli have blown virtually every opposition apart playing a brand of football that's exciting to see and invigorating of belief. Their years of a long wait became nearly over as Giacomo Raspadori grabbed the headlines with a 93rd-minute winner in Turin on Sunday. Napoli players and officials danced back to base as they inched closer to making history. For Osimhen, it was his new reality. He was at home, he felt at home, and as he connected and shouted and lost his voice in absolute glee and jubilation, Napoli again felt like Lagos. Pasuma was right.

The former Lille forward has been a major player in Partenopei’s domestic dominance this season. His 21 league goals and 5 assists have driven Napoli to the summit of Italian football. Yet, it's not just these numbers that will appear to Osimhen as the aggregation of his hard work, but the process that has brought him this close to his first club triumph and first title since he won the U-17 World Cup with Nigeria nearly eight years ago.

Osimhen came out of that tournament as one of the biggest teenage talents in the world. He had scored 10 goals to emerge top scorer and created a record anyone is yet to beat. What followed was a move to Germany with Wolfsburg but things didn't go as planned.

A bout of sickness and rejections in Belgium also followed and for a young player, that was a heavy burden to carry alone. He lost his father within the same period and was lonely in Europe. He rose from his troubles and got a chance with Charleroi. Let's call that the turning point.

A spell in Northern France with Lille helped Osimhen understand the requirements of elite football. He made a big-money move to Naples and until this season, struggled with different grades of injuries with the scariest being his facial injury last season.

What was perhaps a moment everyone feared the most for the attacker has given him what seems to date as his first true trademark. Osimhen has a thing with intention and signs. His hairstyle was a product of one of the lowest points of his life. He ditched all he had previously tried and when he had the hairstyle on at Charleroi, things seemed to have fallen into place for him. Call it coincidence, or superstition, but many footballers have revealed their strangest assumptions about that subject.

His mask, worn to protect his face after his injury may now seem like his grandest trademark yet, and one of his most important matchday pieces.

After defeating Juve on Sunday, Napoli now have a 17-point lead over Lazio in second place, a situation which means if they defeat Salernitana this weekend, and Lazio fail to beat Inter, they'll be crowned Italian champions for the first time in 33 years.

“All the places I have hustled for football, I go reach everywhere back to say thank you,” Osimhen said on his Instagram Live after Napoli’s win. Celebrations have begun in Napoli and his itinerary stretches back to Lagos, the very origin of his dream which Pasuma compared to Napoli sixteen years ago.

“Oregun, Ojota, Olusosun, Alausa, I go reach everywhere back. We go go there, we go flex,” Osimhen said.

“But God is not done with me yet,” he concluded.

And what has been a career of ups and downs is paying off in grand forms. That's the stuff dreams are made of.

PS: Osimhen scored the goal that sealed Napoli’s title triumph and his first in eight years.