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Cristiano Giuntoli was bitterly frustrated by his failure to persuade Erling Haaland to join Napoli from Red Bull Salzburg during the 2020 winter transfer window – but not for long. By the time the summer rolled around, the Partenopei sporting director already had another gifted young striker in his crosshairs, one that Giuntoli firmly believed was "on the same level" as Haaland.
The only problem was that Victor Osimhen had also attracted the attention of Liverpool with his performances in France for Lille. Giuntoli, though, would not be denied on this occasion.
"The signing of Osimhen is Giuntoli’s biggest masterpiece," former Napoli advisor Giandomenico Costi told Tuttosport. "[Osimhen] was essentially locked in a hotel for three days. Giuntoli knew Liverpool were interested, and Jurgen Klopp had made his move. However, Cristiano spoke to Osimhen in the hotel for three days until he convinced him to accept Napoli.
"He was full of energy. Giuntoli is a director who would call you 100 times a day. But he knew Victor very well, he had even followed him at Charleroi, and that was key."
Cristiano Giuntoli was bitterly frustrated by his failure to persuade Erling Haaland to join Napoli from Red Bull Salzburg during the 2020 winter transfer window – but not for long. By the time the summer rolled around, the Partenopei sporting director already had another gifted young striker in his crosshairs, one that Giuntoli firmly believed was “on the same level” as Haaland.
The only problem was that Victor Osimhen had also attracted the attention of Liverpool with his performances in France for Lille. Giuntoli, though, would not be denied on this occasion.
“The signing of Osimhen is Giuntoli’s biggest masterpiece,” former Napoli advisor Giandomenico Costi told Tuttosport. “[Osimhen] was essentially locked in a hotel for three days. Giuntoli knew Liverpool were interested, and Jurgen Klopp had made his move. However, Cristiano spoke to Osimhen in the hotel for three days until he convinced him to accept Napoli.
“He was full of energy. Giuntoli is a director who would call you 100 times a day. But he knew Victor very well, he had even followed him at Charleroi, and that was key.”
Giuntoli’s persistence paid off spectacularly, while the €80 million (£69m/$94m) fee for Osimhen sent shockwaves through Italian football. Osimhen, after all, was still only 21 and coming off the back of one good season in Ligue 1.
However, after a slow start to his spell in الدوري الإيطالي, Osimhen exploded, and scored 26 times in 32 appearances during the 2022-23 season as Napoli won their first Scudetto since the days of Diego Maradona. Giuntoli’s faith in the forward had been fully vindicated. Osimhen really did look like he was on Haaland’s level – or not far off at least.
All he needed was the opportunity to prove himself on an even bigger stage – and, at that point, it felt like only a matter of time before one of Europe’s elite came calling. In January 2024, Osimhen even revealed that he had already decided on his next move, while Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis claimed that his most prized possession would “go to Real Madrid, PSG or some الدوري الإنجليزي الممتاز team”.
The latter prospect threw up the thrilling possibility of Osimhen and Haaland competing for the English top flight’s Golden Boot on an annual basis. However, just over six months after Manchester City handed Haaland a gargantuan, nine-and-a-half-year contract extension worth an eye-watering £500,000 ($677,000) per week, Osimhen has found himself in the extremely surprising position of having to join Galatasaray on a permanent transfer because a puzzling lack of concrete offers from elsewhere.
From the outside looking in, Osimhen really is a curious case – because lesser players are going for more money at the moment. Despite the fact that reliable goal-scorers are thin on the ground, not one top team from Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues was willing to meet the €75m (£65m/$88m) buy-out clause in Osimhen’s Napoli contract.
Liverpool, though, were only too happy to commit to a £79m ($107m) deal for Hugo Ekitike, while one cannot help but wonder why Arsenal were so intent on wrapping up a deal for the similarly-priced Viktor Gyokeres that they did not turn their attention to Osimhen, who is both younger than the Swede and more experienced at the highest level.
Of course, there’s no denying that both Napoli and Osimhen have paid a price for overestimating the strength of their respective hands. De Laurentiis once scoffed at an offer from Al-Hilal worth a reported €200m (£173m/$235m), quipping: “Your offer can buy a single foot of Osimhen. For next year, I think you’ll be able to offer €500m (£433m/$587m) and we’ll maybe consider your offer, but I’ll repeat myself: maybe.”
De Laurentiis was obviously playing up for the cameras (as the notoriously flamboyant film producer so often does), but there was never a doubt in his mind that someone would activate the previous €120m (£104m/$140m) buy-out clause in Osimhen’s contract during the summer of 2023. However, while the transfer market so often spirals out of control, occasionally it contracts – and that’s exactly what happened last year.
For starters, Saudi Pro League sides reeled in their spending after their 2023 summer spree, meaning there was less money moving about the market. Even more significantly, several English clubs, spooked by the Premier League’s sudden interest in enforcing its Profit u0026amp; Sustainability Rules (PSR), were suddenly reluctant to pay massive transfer fees and, more significantly, colossal salaries.
As transfer market expert Ben Jacobs tells بالجم “Chelsea were one of the clubs interested in signing Osimhen last summer, but they needed him to fit into their incentive-driven salary structure. So, it wasn’t just about the number, it was about Osimhen accepting a drop in salary if, for example, Chelsea didn’t get Champions League football. He wasn’t prepared to do that, so finances definitely played a part in preventing a Premier League move.”
Frustratingly for Osimhen, a proposed deal with Al-Ahli also collapsed when De Laurentiis allegedly increased the asking price at the 11th hour, resulting in the Saudi Arabians walking away from the negotiating table. By that point, Osimhen’s relationship with Napoli had completely broken down, meaning there was no chance of him returning to a city that had previously embraced him as one of their own.
It was all rather sad and, ultimately, both parties were left with no other option than to accept Galatasaray’s offer to take Osimhen on loan for a season, given the window had closed in most of Europe’s top leagues – but was still open in Turkey.
Osimhen’s year in the Super Lig couldn’t have gone much better, as he finished as top scorer as Galatasaray won a third consecutive title. If anything, though, Osimhen had done too well.
His impressively prolific campaign (37 goals in just 41 appearances across all competitions) had merely underlined his status as one of the game’s elite strikers. Consequently, it felt like holding onto him (which Gala were desperate to do) had only become even more difficult.
However, even though Osimhen’s buy-out clause had been lowered to €75m at the behest of Napoli, he was left in limbo. Al-Hilal tried to sign him in time for their Club World Cup, but Osimhen once again rejected a move to the Middle East. He was clearly still intent on playing for a Champions League team. As his agent had previously stated, “There is still much to do in Europe for Victor.”
However, his options hadn’t increased. Gala remained the only European side willing to meet the buy-out clause – and it was difficult to work out precisely why.
It has been insinuated in certain quarters that Osimhen has an attitude problem. William Gallas even hypothesised that his former club Arsenal passed on Osimhen because “maybe Mikel Arteta doesn’t have the personality to manage players like Osimhen or to deal with players with personality”.
The thing is, though, there have been very few reports of Osimhen acting in anything other than an impeccable manner, either in the dressing room or on the training pitch. On the contrary, several former team-mates and coaches have described him as an incredibly driven but endearingly humble and hard-working character.
“He’s a really great professional,” ex-Napoli boss Luciano Spalletti once said, “and he’s a very sweet kid who listens to everyone.”
However, Jacobs says that – rightly or wrongly – there was a perception in the Premier League that Osimhen might destabilise a dressing room: “Nobody’s saying Osimhen’s a bad egg, but the big clubs in England were looking for a player that would fit seamlessly into a squad full of other top talents and big stars, and, at the end of the day, the feeling was that Osimhen was perhaps the wrong kind of character in that regard.”
However, there was also a suspicion that Osimhen’s injury record may have been a more significant factor in his seemingly strange shortage of suitors. Osimhen’s fondness for a physical battle and willingness to put his head where it hurts has obviously resulted in picking up several knocks over the years, the most significant of which resulted in fractured skull and eye socket at San Siro in November 2021.
“He’s also had his face cut two or three times because he never backs down,” Spalletti once pointed out.
Osimhen’s “courage” has never really been an issue, though. Of greater concern is his vulnerability to muscular stress and strain, as he’s been sidelined nine times in the past three years with a variety of thigh and hamstring problems.
When one considers that he’s also set to head away on international duty midway through next season for the Africa Cup of Nations, it’s ever so slightly easier to understand why an English side, for example, would have been reluctant to invest a significant sum of money in Osimhen.
The fact remains, though, that Osimhen hasn’t played fewer than 30 games across a single season since he was a teenager at Wolfsburg – which suggests that availability wouldn’t be a major problem for a 26-year-old who should, in theory, be approaching the peak of his physical and technical powers. Indeed, Osimhen is now entering his prime as prepares to potentially spend another three seasons in Istanbul – which is quite the turn of events for a gifted No.9 once coveted all across the continent.
Since Osimhen’s premature declaration that he was ready to take to next “step” in his career 18 months ago, Madrid have signed Kylian Mbappe to play up top, Paris Saint-Germain have proven that you don’t need an orthodox No.9 to win a Champions League, and England’s strongest sides have sought alternative solutions to their respective striking problems – primarily due to Osimhen’s exorbitant wage demands.
On the face of it, one could argue that Osimhen has realised his twin-objectives, in the sense that he’s managed to remain in Europe while at the same time securing a bumper pay raise, with Gala reportedly having agreed to his request of a net salary of €15m (£13m/$17.6m) per annum.
There is also a case to be made that Gala are capable of making a real impact in next season’s Champions League. No Turkish team has ever won the tournament, but Okan Buruk’s side is not short on quality. Davinson Sanchez and Lucas Torreira will both be familiar names to Premier League followers, while Turkey trio Yunus Akgun, Baris Yilmaz and Abudlkerim Bardakci were all integral to last season’s title triumph. What’s more, Osimhen isn’t Gala’s only notable signing of the summer, with Leroy Sane having just joined on a free transfer from Bayern Munich.
There will also be more high-profile arrivals at Rams Park before the summer is out, with Buruk also hoping to bring in a new goalkeeper – and Manchester City No.1 Ederson the top target.
“We have a significant budget,” the Gala coach said. “We are very clear about the goalkeeping issue; we will bring in a player. There are also other positions we are considering [strengthening].”
This, then, is an exciting time for one of the best-supported clubs in world football – and Osimhen is clearly quite happy to be the face of such an ambitious project.
“I think that Osimhen’s perspective changed during his loan stay at Galatasaray,” Jacobs says. “He didn’t want to once again go through what happened to him last summer, when he waited and waited and waited for something to happen but then, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, nothing came off for him.
“So, if you fast-forward to today, his priorities are different now. He wanted stability to maintain his form and was content to continue at Galatasaray, while it obviously helps that Turkish football is clearly growing and that several clubs are showing some serious ambition. Look at Fenerbahce bringing in Jhon Duran, while you’ve also got popular managers like Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer working over there too.
“There’s always been an incredible football culture in Turkey, too, so it’s not a big surprise to see the Super Lig taking off and attracting big names. The standard of play is high and the wages on offer are competitive. But there really was an instant affinity with the Gala fanbase. Osimhen very much fell in love with the club. So, ultimately, I believe that the loan spell was the decisive factor in how this whole affair has concluded.”
Of course, from a neutral’s perspective, it still feels like a shame that Osimhen will be once again operating a few levels below Haaland next season – but, as far as the Nigerian is concerned, maybe that no longer matters.
