Victor Osimhen is good enough for Europe's elite teams - but has Galatasaray goal-getter already missed his chance to join a Champions League challenger?

There's never really been any doubts over Osimhen's ability since he fired Nigeria to victory at the Under-17 World Cup in 2015 with 10 goals in seven games. Injuries and constant coaching changes may have checked his progress at Wolfsburg, but he was snapped up by Lille after a productive loan spell at Charleroi in 2018-19 and had attracted the attention of then-Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp by the end of his first season in France.

Napoli, though, were the only side willing to make Osimhen the most expensive Africa player in football history by paying Lille an initial €70m (£61m/$81m) for the forward in July 2020. Plenty of pundits questioned the club-record fee, but it proved money very well spent, with Osimhen finishing as Capocannoniere while the Partenopei won just their third Serie A title - and first since the days of Diego Maradona.

By that stage, Osimhen had achieved iconic status in Naples. As a kid who had grown up in abject poverty in Lagos, Neapolitans embraced him as one of their own.

"The love I enjoy is massive," Osimhen told BBC Sport Africa. "The club, the city, the fans and everyone connected to Napoli makes me fly."

Unfortunately, though, Osimhen's love affair with Napoli ended in an acrimonious and protracted divorce.

It all started with a TikTok video that was apparently meant to be funny but was actually just offensive, with Napoli's social media department bizarrely deciding to mock Osimhen for missing a penalty in a 0-0 draw with Bologna on September 24, 2023.

"I feel sorry for the fans, also because I never spoke about what happened before," the striker revealed in an interview with the Gazzetta dello Sport just last month. "Some of them even came to my house asking for an explanation. I asked them to put themselves in my shoes. After Napoli posted that video on TikTok, something broke.

"Anyone can miss a penalty, and anyone can be mocked for it. Napoli did it only to me, and with certain kinds of insinuations as well. I was the victim of racist insults, and I made my decision. I wanted to leave. I deleted the photos of me wearing the Napoli shirt from my Instagram, and they took the opportunity to turn the fans against me. And to think that, for me, my daughter is more Neapolitan than Nigerian.

"No one ever publicly apologised for what happened. After that famous video, Edoardo De Laurentiis called me several times. That’s it. Meanwhile, rumours were going around that I arrived late at training, and that I argued with team-mates. They’re all lies. I’m sorry for the fans, but I understand and admire them: they support the club, no matter what. For them, Napoli comes before everything."

Osimhen was also bitterly upset by Napoli's approach to transfer talks during the summer of 2025 - and particularly the collapse of a proposed move to Al-Ahli, who walked away from the negotiating table after the Serie A side allegedly increased their asking price at the 11th hour.

"We had a gentleman's agreement but the commitment was not fully respected on the other side," he said. "They tried to send me anywhere to play, but they treated me like a dog. Go here, go there, do this, do that. I worked so hard to build my career, and I couldn't accept that kind of treatment. I'm not a puppet."

It should not be forgotten, though, that Osimhen's hopes of securing a transfer to one of Europe's biggest teams was also hindered by his exorbitant wage demands.

As transfer market expert Ben Jacobs told GOAL, "Chelsea were one of the clubs interested in signing Osimhen in 2024, 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."

Jacobs also said that there was a view in England that Osimhen would be a potentially disruptive influence in the dressing room.

"Nobody's saying Osimhen's a bad egg, but the big Premier League clubs 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," Jacobs added.

The perception certainly persists that Osimhen is a difficult personality to manage. In fact, it's probably only been strengthened by his on-field row with Nigeria team-mate Ademola Lookman during the Africa Cup of Nations.

Osimhen even cut a frustrated figure after Gala's remarkable 5-2 first-leg rout of Juventus in last month's Champions League play-offs, with the feeling being that the No.9 was annoyed at failing to score in Istanbul. Still, Osimhen insists that he's not in the least bit unsettled in Istanbul and is actually grateful for the way in which things have turned out for him.

"I found a club and a city that I love, so maybe it was a stroke of luck," he said of his move to Gala, who are paying him a fixed annual salary of €15m (£13m/$17m) per season that can rise to as much as €21m (£18m/$24m) net if certain targets are met.

"As soon as you arrive in Istanbul, you understand why anyone who has played here has fallen in love with the team and the people. I had never experienced anything like it."

Unsurprisingly, Gala are just as enamoured with Osimhen as he is with them.

"When we purchased him, many spoke of it as a crazy investment," vice-president Abdullah Kavukcu pointed out. "I think Victor has proven everyone wrong, considering that his value has doubled. We know he is one of the best centre-forwards in the world and we want to achieve great goals together.

"With Napoli, the purchase of Osimhen was complicated, but it is normal when talking about such high figures: De Laurentiis had set the price and, when we came forward, he wanted to be sure that we would be able to pay all that money. Having succeeded is a source of great pride, because we have shown everyone the power of our club."

Gala certainly made the rest of Europe sit up and take notice by flexing their financial muscles in the summer transfer market. As well as signing Osimhen, they also brought in high-profile free agents Ilkay Gundogan and Leroy Sane on a big salaries, spent more than €30m (£26m/$35m) on Ivory Coast defender Wilfried Singo, and an additional €27.5m (£24m/$32m) on Turkey goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir to further underline's the club's ambition to become a major player in the Champions League.

"It will take us a few years, but the project is well under way," Kavukcu said. "Our fans are spread all over the world and in Istanbul one settles in quickly. When we present our plan to the players, it is difficult for them to refuse to play for us."

And yet for all of the nice things Osimhen and Gala are saying about one another, the transfer talk is only intensifying. Just last week, it was claimed that Bayern Munich have identified him as a potential replacement for Harry Kane, while there have also been rumours in Spain that Barcelona consider him a possible alternative to Julian Alvarez if they can't persuade Atletico Madrid to part company with the Argentine.

The thing is, though, that while Kavukcu is perfectly entitled to argue that Osimhen's value has doubled since his arrival, no European club is going to pay €150m for a player who they didn't want for half that fee last summer.

Because nothing has really changed in the interim. Osimhen is still scoring goals but remains regarded as something of a combustible character with a chequered injury record. He's obviously a fantastic footballer. He knows it too. And it's clear that he'd jump at the chance to join one of the game's grandest clubs. He even admitted after Gala's play-off win over Juventus that it would be a "privilege" to represent the Bianconeri.

Again, though, there's not a team in Italy that could afford Osimhen and, at 27, he's much further away from joining Real Madrid, PSG or some Premier League club than he was two years ago.

So, while he may well offer another reminder of his world-class quality against Liverpool on Tuesday, it really is starting to feel like his chance to represent a true Champions League challenger may already have passed him by.

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