Film study: Victor Osimhen
The Nigerian will be expensive this summer. Should Arsenal try for him?
Everybody’s got a favorite striker coming to market this summer, but when you take a step back it’s pretty clear who’s A1, at least in terms of buzz: Victor Osimhen will be the biggest name to switch sides in the offseason.
The Nigerian is now in year four at Napoli after bouncing around Germany, Belgium and France as a young attacker, and his returns in Italy have certainly been the most encouraging so far. At time of writing Osimhen has scored 57 non-penalty goals in about 80 90s in Serie A, or about three goals for every four full games he’s played. He’s got another 9 goals in 14 champions league 90s, an important bit of experience for a club looking to go deep in that tournament.
This all sounds great! It’s a lock then, right? Well, maybe not.
The biggest thing to flag about Osimhen is definitely his health. Transfermarkt estimates he’s missed about 35 matches for club and country since moving to Napoli in 2020. Some are muscular, which is what you really worry about, while others are more clearly anomalies, like catching COVID or literally breaking his face.
Osimhen has been leading my Twitter threads and player rankings for literal years, and finished the 2021-2022 season atop my own striker rankings. So it’s been a little discouraging to see his drop this season - in my last ranking he was 25th.
Naturally, there are caveats to this one. Napoli are having a turbulent season after the departure of Luciano Spalletti, who had them playing gorgeous football en route to a league title. Walter Mazzarri replaced Rudi Garcia mid-season but it sure seems like the club will move on from him after the season or sooner.
Meanwhile, Osimhen sent a clear “come get me” message to major clubs by signing a new contract that includes a reasonable enough release clause, reported in some places to be just over £100m. That should make this season his last in sky blue.
So that’s the backstory on the player. Now the £100m question: is he actually that good?
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