Victor Osimhen has opened up on the darkest stretch of his early career, revealing how illness cost him moves to two Belgian clubs before Charleroi gave him the lifeline that changed everything, Footynaija.com reports.
Speaking in a YouTube documentary titled Victor Osimhen: The Untold Story, the Galatasaray striker described in detail how close he came to falling out of professional football entirely.
After a difficult spell at Wolfsburg where he rarely featured, Osimhen headed to Belgium in search of a loan move. What he found instead was rejection, twice over.
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“At first, I went to a club in Belgium. I was rejected because I had malaria and typhoid,” he said, as revealed by Pulse Sports.
“I moved back to Germany; I started training. Another club in Belgium called me. I did the medical and everything. The doctor said, ‘Yeah, for me, everything is perfect.’ So the president of the club said because the first club that called me didn’t sign me, they also cannot sign me. I shook his hand, I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and I left. I moved on.”
The two clubs were Zulte Waregem and Club Brugge, the reigning Belgian champions at the time. A summer bout with malaria had weakened him so severely that he failed medicals at both clubs.
The second rejection was particularly cruel, turned away not for medical reasons but out of deference to the first club’s decision.
Charleroi, however, took the risk and signed him on loan with an option to buy for €3.5 million. Osimhen repaid that faith with 20 goals in 36 games, a spell that opened the door to Lille, then Napoli, then the heights he occupies today as one of the most feared strikers in European football.
“It was destined,” Osimhen said. The numbers since have made it hard to argue otherwise.
