SSC Napoli of Italy striker, Victor Osimhen has received a stern charge on the need to improve his game and justify the hefty fee for which the Italian Serie A club bought him last summer from Lille Metropole of France, megasportsarena.com reports.
This is the terse verdict of Italian transfer market expert, Gianni Di Marzio, who questioned the amount Napoli paid Lille for the striker, as he believes the product of Ultimate Strikers Football Academy of Ojota, Lagos is still a boy growing up.
Di Marzio admitted that Osimhen is already showing the physique and attributes of a top striker, but posited that it is only because the Chile 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup top scorer is precocious, which means he still has a lot to learn in order to justify his huge transfer fee.
Osimhen, who has also previously played for VfL Wolfsburg of Germany and Sporting Charleroi of Belgium, is currently the most expensive African player in history, after joining Napoli for an initial 80 million euro.
That deal also saw Osimhen surpass Hirving Lozano’s 42 million euro fee from PSV Eindhoven of Holland as Napoli’s costliest transfer ever but, while the youngster’s goals scoring form has shot up in recent weeks, Di Marzio stressed that he is not surprised seeing the velvety lad struggle in his first Serie A season.
Having scored just five goals in 23 appearances across all competitions, Di Marzio reckons that Osimhen is not worth more than 15 million euros and concluded that, considering that the lad is still undergoing a learning process, he can only be used a backup striker in a top European team.
Di Marzio told Il Bello del Calcio on Canale 21: “Osimhen? He has to mature, I have often said. He shouldn’t be evaluated not for how much he has been paid; he is a boy with a physique who has to learn movements that no one has ever taught him.
“In Nigeria, as I see it, they have not. He is not a player to be bought at high figures, he can be worth 10/15 million, he must mature and in a high level team he can be a good alternative to the starting forward.”
