Liverpool could be made to pay for the previous actions of the man expected to become the club's new sporting director and it brings good news to fans of Chelsea and Arsenal.
Despite being 40 points apart in the table it hasn't stopped the two London rivals both being linked for similar players in the summer with both Declan Rice and Moises Caicedo mutually admired by the sides. It is in attack that they are on red alert, though.
In Victor Osimhen, Chelsea and Arsenal are keen to add the hottest property on the striker market in world football this summer, but he won't come cheap. Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis is already an infamously tough negotiator and Osimhen's position as one of the best forward in Europe only strengthens his position.
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It has been reported that a £150m ($187.9m) bid will be needed to secure his signature, a price too much for German giants Bayern Munich. Meanwhile De Laurentiis has said that he won't be moving regardless. For Liverpool's prospective sporting director Jorg Schmadtke, it is a sickening statement.
The highly-rated Wolfsburg man took on Osimhen as a youngster, fresh out of a Nigerian football academy. The 24-year-old was sent out on loan at the time after only playing three times in a relegation battle for Wolfsburg in 2017. As a teenager he scored 20 times on loan in Belgium but Schmadtke didn't see signs of the player he would go on to be and sold him.
For the tiny price of £3m ($3.7m) he was snatched up by Charlerloi but moved on quickly to Lille within six weeks for around £10.4m ($13m). The rest, as they say, is history. His 23 goal season in Serie A comes in his third year in Italy. He bagged 24 in his first two combined and now looks set to finish as the league's top scorer.
Outside of Harry Kane and Erling Haaland there are few as fancied as Osimhen. “It wasn’t a good move, in hindsight,” Schmadtke told Kicker. “When I came, he was limping and running in circles. I was told that the strikers we had weren’t good enough. The most important lesson is that you have to be patient with some transfers.”
In his defence, the young Osimhen hadn't scored in 16 games for Wolfsburg and the club needed solutions quickly. "When I arrived at Wolfsburg, everything was different compared to what I was used to,” the star striker addmited to Sport1. “I thought, will I get through this?
"But if I had stayed in Nigeria, I wouldn’t have been given a chance like the one they gave me in Germany. It was my first time in Europe. I was only 18 but didn’t have the time to adapt.”
Liverpool and Schmadtke's pain is the potential gain of Chelsea and Arsenal. Osimhen certainly isn't going unrecognised anymore but that doesn't mean he will be any easier to pick up.
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