According to reports, Super Eagles attacker Victor Osimhen claimed that agents and club officials forced his 2020 transfer from Lille to Napoli through when his father was in serious condition, without getting his full consent.
According to Osimhen’s evidence, which was leaked to Italy’s Guardia di Finanza and reported by La Repubblica, he was not given access to a draft of his contract and felt excluded from the talks between Lille executives and Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis.
One of the most talked-about transactions of the 2020 summer was Osimhen’s €70 million relocation, but it is currently the focus of an Italian financial inquiry due to suspected incorrect accounting.
“Napoli had shown a lot of interest in me through my former agent, Jean Gerard, but he was more concerned with my move than with my father’s condition. Punch quotes Osimhen as saying, “I just wanted to know how he was doing; I didn’t have the brain to think about football at the time.”
He remembered being called to a meeting with Gerard Lopez, the president of Lille, and Luis Campos, the sporting director, in Nice, when he was informed that the transfer had already been finalized.
They advised me to relocate to Napoli, stating that a deal had already been reached in principle and that Lille would benefit from the pandemic. However, I was unaware of it,” he continued.
Osimhen said he was devastated when his father died during the negotiations. Since I couldn’t visit Lille before he passed away, I was furious with both him and my agency. Without even being aware of my father’s passing, they even informed me that I would have to go for Naples the next day,” he recalled.
“He asked me if I had seen the contract, but I hadn’t received anything,” he said, denying that he had viewed the document before signing it.
In July 2020, the 25-year-old finally fired his agent and hired William D’Avila, who finalized the agreement with Maurizio Micheli of Napoli and other officials.
Prosecutors in Italy are currently looking into whether Lille and Napoli overvalued a number of lesser-known players in order to conceal the real cost of the deal.
The fact that three young players—Luigi Liguori, Claudio Manzi, and Ciro Palmieri—were named in the deal but never played for Lille raised more questions regarding the validity of the transfer.
