The owner of French Ligue 1 side Lille, Gerard Lopez, has insisted that the club has received multiple offers from clubs in three different leagues across Europe for Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen. He compared the deal that saw Ivory Coast striker Nicolas Pepe leave the club to Arsenal in 2019 to that of Osimhen.
Lopez noted that people didn’t believe Pepe’s deal which worth about £72 million would scale through until it happened, implying that the club is looking at selling Osimhen to his suitors around the same rate they sold Pepe.
Osimhen joined Lille before the commencement of the disrupted 2019-2020 season from Sporting Charleroi. His five years transfer deal reportedly worth about £10 million but the club is looking forward to making almost 6 times that amount this summer.
In less than 12 months at Lille, Osimhen has scored 18 goals and made about 5 assists in all competitions for the club. He is currently among the top 5 highest goal scorers in the French Ligue 1 and one of the best tackler in the league.
The 21-year-old Nigeria international would have left Lille in January, according to the owner of the club, but the club decided to keep him until now. He almost joined Napoli recently but the asking price of Lille scared the club away.
“There are multiple offers,” Gerard Lopez told Mail Online. “We turned down one English and one Spanish offer this January transfer window.
“There is a wide array [this summer] and I wouldn’t want to give the names of the clubs who are bidding but what I can tell you is that there are multiple [offers]. There are three championships that have clubs that have bid for him.
“I am not being a sales guy because last year people didn’t believe that we had the offers we had with [Nicolas] Pepe and it turns out we had multiple of them.
“Let me tell you with Osimhen, it is the same thing, whatever number you heard, the high number I have read is very much on the money of the offers that we have received. That’s where we are.”
Osimhen is reportedly wanted at Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool. Osimhen’s agent Ariyo Igbayilola recently discouraged the move of Tottenham Hotspurs to acquire the signature of the 21-year-old forward because he wants Spurs to sell their talisman Harry Kane before Osimhen’s move to the club can be discussed.
