He has led Napoli to clinch the Napoli clinch first Serie A title in 33 years after draw with Udinese
Napoli won their first Italian Serie A title in 33 years, clinching the Scudetto on Thursday with a 1-1 draw at Udinese.
Needing only a draw to take an unassailable 16-point lead with five games remaining, Serie A’s top scorer, Victor Osimhen, equalised for Napoli in the 52nd minute to spark wild celebrations throughout Naples, inside the stadium in Udine and beyond.
The title is Napoli’s third in Italy’s top division and their first since the legendary Argentine player Diego Maradona led them to championships in 1987 and 1990. Napoli’s home stadium was renamed in Maradona’s honour following his death in November 2020.
Napoli coach Luciano Spalletti said the impact of Maradona was “felt in this success.”
“Napoli, this is for you,” he added. “There are people here who will be able to get through difficult moments in their lives because they remember this moment. These people deserve all the joy.”
Napoli could have sealed the title at home on Sunday but conceded a late equaliser to Salernitana to extend the wait four more days. They went into Thursday’s game knowing a point would be enough, even after nearest challengers Lazio beat Sassuolo a day earlier.
Besides the 11,000 Napoli fans inside and 5,000 more outside the stadium in Udine in northern Italy, a capacity crowd of more than 50,000 watched the match on jumbo screens at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona in Naples.
In Udine, celebrating fans invaded the field at the final whistle, while in Naples there were fireworks and delirium.
One man died from gunshot wounds and seven people were injured overnight in Naples as the southern Italian city exploded in joy at the success of its soccer team, a local government official said on Friday.
A man died from gunshot wounds but the incident had “nothing to do with the celebrations”, Naples Prefect Claudio Palomba told RAI public radio.
“You always told me, ‘We want to win,’ and now we’ve won. We’ve won all together,” Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis told the crowd at the Naples stadium before he embraced Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi.
De Laurentiis took over the club in 2004 when Napoli was declared bankrupt, restarting in the third division.
“This is the coronation of a dream that’s been going on for 33 years,” De Laurentiis added. “It’s been a long process.”
It’s the first time a club south of Italy’s traditional soccer capitals of Milan and Turin has won the league since Roma claimed the title in 2001.
Napoli matched the record of clinching with five rounds to spare, shared with Torino (1947-48), Fiorentina (1955-56), Inter Milan (2006-07) and Juventus (2018-19).
– Naples goes wild celebrating Serie A title
For weeks, Napoli’s march to the title had seemed inevitable as they built a massive lead over their rivals.
Spalletti’s side went unbeaten through the first 15 games of the campaign, including an 11-match winning streak. After their first loss, away at Inter, Napoli immediately went on an eight-game winning run to go 18 points clear at the top and put a stranglehold on the Scudetto.
The team has been led by Osimhen, who fittingly secured the title Thursday with his 22nd goal of the campaign. During his goal celebration, Osimhen broke his face mask and the Nigeria forward had to play without it for a few minutes while it was repaired by Napoli staff members on the sideline.
“I’m happy for all Napoli fans worldwide,” Osimhen said. “No one deserves the Scudetto more than Neapolitans — more than us.
“I don’t care who scored, I just wanted to get the Scudetto.”
It was Osimhen’s 46th of his Serie A career, matching former AC Milan standout and current Liberia President George Weah as the top African scorers in Italy.
Another standout performer has been winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who arrived as an unheralded signing from Georgia last summer and became a sensation, scoring 12 league goals and adding 10 assists.
Giovanni Simeone said winning the Scudetto with Napoli as an Argentine is all the more “special”.
The forward, who scored three goals in 20 league appearances while on loan at Napoli from Hellas Verona this season, said: “As an Argentine, one feels a special emotion. Diego [Maradona] is present in all the Neapolitans in the same way that he is with the Argentines. The fans don’t stop reminding me that I’m the first Argentine who has been lucky enough to experience these moments since Diego. It’s very exciting and I’m sure he’s celebrating like all of us.”
Normally superstitious about mentioning the word “Scudetto,” Neapolitans have been festooning the city with banners, flags and life-size replicas of Napoli players as they gear up for a party that has been on hold for several weeks.
The wait was extended after a tough month in April, when Napoli managed only two wins in seven games in all competitions and crashed out of the Champions League.
Napoli, though, wasn’t even considered a title contender before the season because of the departures of former captain Lorenzo Insigne, club record scorer Dries Mertens and defensive stalwart Kalidou Koulibaly.
The title also gives Napoli coach Spalletti the one honour he has coveted most after previously managing Roma and Inter and winning two Russian league championships with Zenit St. Petersburg.
The Nigerian’s goals have brought Napoli to the brink of a first Serie A title since 1990, making him a hero in the port city. His blistering form has also made him one of the most coveted players in world football.
Victor Osimhen’s second goal against Juventus in January will live long in the memory of Napoli fans.
With Napoli winning 3-1 at home, the Nigerian striker rose above everyone else to meet a cross to head past Wojciech Szczęsny and grab his second of the day, effectively killing the game.
In his typical style, the Nigerian whisked off his trademark face mask after scoring and ran towards the fans, taking it all in. Napoli’s eventual 5-1 win exorcised Juventus – a ghost of their past – and sent a statement that the Partenopei was on course to win a first Scudetto in more than 30 years.
Osimhen has led Napoli’s title charge but, while his talents were never in doubt, few predicted Napoli’s 24-year-old striker would be so dominant this season.
His tally of 21 goals in Italy’s Serie A has made him the league’s top scorer by some margin, and he has also scored four in Napoli’s historic run to the Champions League quarters.
Osimhen is not only a ruthless finisher but a scorer of all types of goals – from the tap-in to the spectacular, with either foot or his head – and his four assists in Serie A show he has more to his game than just goalscoring.
With Napoli currently 14 points clear of their nearest rivals in Serie A and poised to win their first title since Diego Maradona led them to a second Scudetto in 1990, Osimhen has captured the heart of a gritty, working-class port city that knows how to put its heroes on a pedestal.
The Nigerian international’s face with his mask – worn after he sustained a cheekbone injury – adorns cakes across the southern city. Fans queue up to buy replica masks from stalls outside the stadium. And a song composed by musician Alex Garini about the striker went viral in February and celebrates his goal-scoring ability and his grit to defy the odds.
“Victor is reaching cult status with his dedication to the team, his embrace of the fans that we see when he celebrates his goals and how they in turn have begun to infuse him into daily life,” Lolade Adewuyi, the managing editor at Soccernet Nigeria, told Al Jazeera.
“Perhaps he will become a Maradona-esque figure if he leads them to the Serie A and the Champions League titles.”
Osimhen missed three games in recent weeks with a groin injury and Napoli have looked blunt without him.
But he will be back in the side for Tuesday’s crunch second-leg Champions League quarterfinal against fellow Italian giants AC Milan, who beat Napoli 1-0 in the first leg in Milan.
Meanwhile, his blistering form this season has made him one of the most coveted players in world football.
‘He has so much fight inside him’
Osimhen grew up in Olusosun, Lagos, idolising former Chelsea and Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba.
He has said in interviews that his family had to struggle to make ends meet when he was a child and he had lost his mother at a young age.
Journalist Oma Akatugba, Osimhen’s friend and journalist from Nigeria, believes these struggles helped shape the Lagos-born star’s playing style and character.
“He once said to me that in a very poor neighbourhood, [his family] were the poorest. They needed to fight for everything. He had to work very hard, sell newspapers, do all kinds of menial jobs to earn a living while playing,” Akatugba said.
“That is what has built him into the strong, energetic, pacy and powerful striker that he is today. Much more than that, he has so much fight inside of him.”
Nigeria Under-17s coach Nnamdi Onuigbo says Osimhen always appeared to have a huge drive to succeed.
“Nigeria is a tough place to try to become a professional footballer. Despite all the talents here, the structure and opportunities are not as organised or readily available as it is in Europe,” he said.
“It takes a brave, determined kid to make it to the top from the suburbs in Nigeria. Osimhen is one of them.”
Akatugba says that, since his early days back in Nigeria, Osimhen has learned to control his temper and avoid being provoked by opponents, and his game has developed significantly.
“His game has evolved from that player who plays with that raw, brute force. That raw energy now has some level of finesse to the game,” Akatugba said. “Especially after joining Napoli, where football is quite tactical, as is the case in Italy generally. Also, playing under [coach] Luciano Spalletti [has improved him].”
Osimhen first moved to Europe in 2017, joining Bundesliga side Wolfsburg. He struggled to get first-team games and didn’t score in 14 games for the club. But he hailed how ex-Bayern Munich striker Mario Gomez helped him in training during their time at the club.
That proved vital after he moved to Charleroi on loan in 2018 and went on to score 20 goals in 36 games in all competitions for the Belgian club. He scored 18 goals in a season for Lille in 2019-20, before securing a move to Napoli in July 2020.
Akatugba says the experience of moving in quick succession didn’t just improve him as a footballer, it also matured him as a person.
“He has moved quite a lot in a very short period. That has helped him adapt to different cultures and to relate with people of different backgrounds and understand them,” he said.
Osimhen’s partnership with Georgian winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia at Napoli has sparkled in the league, and it has become the talk of Europe as well. Coach Spalletti’s attacking, possession-based style, which also relies on allowing the strengths of individual players to thrive, has made Napoli a well-oiled machine.
“Earlier, a lot of Napoli journalists told me that perhaps [Osimhen] might need to improve tactically … He seems to understand feedback, he seems to understand positive criticism. That has helped his game to grow,” said Akatugba.
Osimhen’s 53 goals for Napoli have come in just 92 games.
Meanwhile, his success at Napoli is also garnering the Italian club a growing fanbase back home.
“Many Nigerians are keenly following Napoli’s games because of his incredible performances – just like the old Nigerian stars brought their following to their clubs,” Adewuyi noted.
“For example, many Nigerians, including myself, are fans of Arsenal because of Nwankwo Kanu. Many young Nigerians are becoming fans of Napoli because of Victor.”
However, Osimhen’s transfer value is rising with every goal he scores and he is reportedly on the radar of several Premier League sides.
Osimhen has said he wants to emulate Drogba and play in the Premier League one day.
Napoli fan Andrea Morganti says he desperately hopes Osimhen can resist the allure of the Premier League for a while longer, and says Osimhen’s connection with those in Naples is not only down to his goals.
“It’s about everything, the way he moves on the pitch and just the relationship he has with us fans outside the pitch. There isn’t a moment that he doesn’t stop to say hello and autograph our shirts. He is a humble boy who loves the city,” Morganti told Al Jazeera.
“Let’s hope he stays in Naples for a long time. We are ready to celebrate [the title] with him.”
