The Mask of Osimhen

How a horrific head and facial injury propelled Victor James Osimhen to become one of the fiercest strikers of the modern era

Milan Škriniar was only doing his job as a centre-back for Inter Milan by contesting the header. If he knew that by jumping up he would fracture another player’s eye, he probably would have let his opponent have the ball. But it was too late. Osimhen’s eye was out of his socket by this time, and the Olusosun bred Nigerian striker would require a three-hour surgery to fix the horrific injury. Six plates and eighteen screws had to be used to anchor Osimhen’s damaged malar bone.

“He [Osimhen] had a series of fractures”, Gianpaolo Tartaro, the surgeon who worked on Osimhen’s head injury told Italian sports magazine Il Corriere dello Sport. “It was as if his head had ended up under a press. [Surgery] took three hours. We had to cut him in three places on his face. The eye came out of its socket. It is not simple at all, in fact it is very delicate due to the crushing of the socket, due to the curving of the malar bone [which is] practically destroyed. We have to now look at a special mask for his case. It is not something banal, there is a nerve there, it is all very difficult. We will see how his situation evolves”, Tartaro clarified.

Read: Is Tinubu Still Relevant?

Osimhen stretched off the pitch after suffering a shoulder injury in Nigeria’s AfCON qualifer with Sierra Leone in November 2020

For Osimhen, the victim of a crushed face, it felt like his childhood dream of become a footballing icon had been crushed, too. After completing a move to S.S.C. Napoli in July 2020 for a club record fee of €70 million euros, all he wanted to do was score goals and make football fans across the world proud. But injuries wouldn’t let him be. Just a year earlier, in November 2020, Osimhen had been stretched off in a African Cup of Nations (AfCON) qualifier between Nigeria and Sierra Leone after landing awkwardly on his shoulder and his wrist. Osimhen was then advised by his Club to remain in Nigeria and recuperate from this injury. But misfortune followed him like a plague. While in Nigeria trying to recover from the shoulder and wrist injury, the lanky striker caught the deadly Covid-19 disease in January 2021, all together ruling him out of action for 77 days. He only came back on January 29, 2021 in Napoli’s 4-2 win over Spezia.

It was this series of niggling injuries and set backs that threatened to derail Osimhen’s career; and the collision with Inter Milan’s Škriniar resulting in multiple displaced cheek and eye socket fractures almost did. But Osimhen is a fighter, on and off the pitch. He has said so himself. “In 2021, I had a huge surgery on my face. It was a bad one that required me to do a face surgery. They passed through my jaw to bring the plate on my eyebrows. So it was really a tough moment for me”, Osimhen revealed to veteran Nigerian sports journalist, EseOghene Matthew Edafe of Elegbete Sports TV. “But I’m happy I was surrounded by my loved ones. This was what really makes it (sic) to heal faster and I am happy that I got a mask that protects me from recurring injury…I’ll give my all for this game to make sure that my dreams and aspirations come to pass, and I’m really looking forward to it”, he enthused.

“The Mask of Osimhen”

Yet, after the rain always comes the rainbow. The 2022/23 football season proved to be a fortuitous one for Osimhen. He scored 26 goals in the legacy heralding season, thereby surpassing George Weah to become the highest scoring African player ever in the Serie A with 47 goals. His timely contributions in the sky blue shirts of S.S.C. Napoli have also propelled the Club to lifting the Scudetto for the first time in 33 years. “Now I’m smashing it and I’m doing so well for myself. I’m extremely proud of myself that I’m putting up these numbers, smashing it and doing so well for my team and now I’m on course to be a champion for the first time ever in my life”, Osimhen confessed his feelings to Elegbete Sports TV.

Osimhen dispaying his Scudetto trophy, Best Striker in Serie A award Serie A top scorer award at Napoli’s Diego Armando Maradona Stadium in Fuorigrotta, Naples, Italy

And Osimhen’s face, what about it? Well, Osimhen got a special face mask to prevent him from future facial injuries, just had Dr. Tartaro had predicted. And how popular is Osimhen and his mask? For that, you just need a sample size of what avid football fans have been saying on Twitter.

Hear Osimhen himself:

I think the mask has become my identity, with my blonde hair. A lot of kids have been putting on this mask. A lot of fathers and mothers. Some of my teammates' kids send me the videos and the pictures. It is an amazing feeling [for people] to be inspired by this mask and I’m really happy about this. So even though they remove the plate or they don’t, I think I will keep the mask for ever”.