“Serious matter”
SSC Napoli makes their own goalscorer ridiculous
September 27, 2023, 10:00 a.m
SSC Napoli has a really bad idea: In a video, the Italian champions ridicule their own star striker. Victor Osimhen doesn’t find it funny at all, his agent even threatens legal action against the club.
Victor Osimhen is a highly sought-after goalscorer; last season the Nigerian almost single-handedly shot SSC Napoli to their first Italian championship in more than 30 years with 26 goals. The 24-year-old is once again successful this season: three goals in the first five league games is a stable record. It is all the more astonishing what the Italian club has now done – and what is causing great anger not only in Osimhen’s camp: SSC Napoli distributed a video on its official Tiktok channel in which their own goalscorer is mocked. The clip, which was apparently intended to be funny, was not well received by Osimhen.
“A video making fun of Victor was first published and then, but belatedly, deleted. A serious matter that causes serious harm to the player and the treatment that the boy has received in recent times between media trials and fake news, “We reserve the right to take legal action and any useful initiative to protect Victor,” Osimhen’s advisor Roberto Calenda wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “What happened today on Napoli’s official profile on the Tiktok platform is unacceptable.”
The video shows Osimhen demanding a penalty in the game against Bologna FC (“Give me a penalty, please!”) and then missing it. The striker’s voice was absurdly artificially edited for the video; the 24-year-old sounds like Mickey Mouse in the short clip.
Osimhen removed all ties with Napoli from his Instagram page following the incident. Already during the game, in which Osimhen was substituted after hitting the post and missing a penalty in the 86th minute, there was a commotion: When he was substituted, the hapless striker got into a wild war of words with his coach Rudi Garcia. According to media reports, this should at least have been cleared up.
It is not yet possible to foresee what consequences the short video has had: Naples and Osimhen have been negotiating for months without success over an extension of the striker’s contract, who once moved to Europe from Nigeria to VfL Wolfsburg.