Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis has disclosed that Antonio Conte explicitly instructed him to sell Victor Osimhen while keeping Khvicha Kvaratskhelia when PSG tabled a €200 million combined offer at the start of Conte’s tenure — and admits that ultimately doing the reverse was a significant error.
The inside story of how Victor Osimhen left Napoli has been complicated from the start, and a new revelation from club owner Aurelio De Laurentiis adds another layer to it. Speaking to The Athletic, De Laurentiis disclosed that when Paris Saint-Germain came in with a combined €200 million offer for both Osimhen and Kvaratskhelia at the beginning of Antonio Conte’s tenure, Conte’s instruction was specific: the Georgian winger was to stay, the Nigerian striker could go. When we started with Conte, we received an offer of €200m from PSG and others to sell Victor Osimhen and Kvara together. Mr Conte said, ‘Osimhen you can sell, but please don’t sell Kvara’,” De Laurentiis explained. Napoli followed that instruction at the time, eventually allowing Osimhen to depart on loan to Galatasaray in September 2024 after proposed moves to Chelsea and Al-Ahli had collapsed. New Bet9ja users following Osimhen’s career can access the Bet9ja’s YOHAIG welcome bonus at bet9japromotioncode.com.ng.
The twist is in what happened next. Kvaratskhelia, the player Conte had specifically asked to keep, was sold to PSG in January 2025. De Laurentiis describes that decision as a mistake, acknowledging it created significant problems with the player’s father and agent. “Big mistake. Because after, I had big trouble with Kvara’s father and agent.” The sequence therefore represents one of the more unusual transfer sagas in Italian football’s recent history: Napoli listened to their manager, kept the player he wanted, and then sold that same player anyway months later — with regret. Nigerian football fans following Osimhen’s journey from Napoli to Galatasaray can use the Bet9ja promotion code for a welcome bonus ahead of the Turkish title run-in.
What Osimhen Gave Napoli
The numbers confirm why the Nigerian was central to everything at Napoli during his peak years there. In 133 matches for the club, Osimhen scored 76 goals and provided 18 assists, a return that includes the 26-goal campaign in 2022/23 that powered Napoli’s first Serie A title in 33 years and earned him the Paolo Rossi Award as Serie A’s top scorer. He had also committed his future to the club in December 2023 with a new contract, though a private agreement already existed between him and De Laurentiis allowing a departure the following summer. The proposed Chelsea and Al-Ahli moves both broke down, and the Galatasaray loan that followed eventually became a permanent transfer. From the perspective of what Osimhen produced at Napoli, Conte’s instinct to make him available was not about doubting his quality: it was about building a team around a player whose style fitted his system. The Super Eagles striker has since flourished in Istanbul, where he remains one of the most feared forwards in European football. Bet9ja users backing Osimhen and Galatasaray in the Super Lig run-in can find the latest Bet9ja promo code at bet9japromotioncode.ng.
📌 Did You Know?
- Victor Osimhen’s 26 Serie A goals in Napoli’s 2022/23 Scudetto-winning season made him the first Nigerian player to win the Serie A top scorer award, with the Paolo Rossi Award named in honour of the Italian World Cup winner who passed away in December 2020.
- Napoli’s 2022/23 Serie A title ended a 33-year wait since their last league championship in 1990, a season that has become one of the most celebrated in the club’s history alongside their two earlier titles won during Diego Maradona’s time at the club.
- Antonio Conte, who instructed De Laurentiis to sell Osimhen, is renowned across European football for his highly structured pressing systems that demand specific physical profiles from his strikers, which may explain his preference for retaining Kvaratskhelia’s direct dribbling style over Osimhen’s vertical running game.
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, the Georgian winger whose sale to PSG De Laurentiis regrets, was one of the breakout stars of the 2022/23 Serie A season alongside Osimhen, with his direct running and goal contribution rate drawing comparisons to some of the best wide players in European football.
- Osimhen’s proposed transfers to both Chelsea and Al-Ahli collapsing left him in a difficult position at Napoli heading into the final weeks of the 2024 summer transfer window, before Galatasaray moved quickly to secure a loan deal that subsequently became permanent.
- Paris Saint-Germain’s €200 million combined offer for Osimhen and Kvaratskhelia, had it been accepted, would have represented one of the largest single-window spending commitments by a club in the history of the transfer market at that point in time.
- Osimhen scored 76 goals across his five seasons at Napoli, making him the club’s second-highest foreign scorer in history behind Gonzalo Higuain, whose 91-goal return between 2013 and 2016 set the benchmark for non-Italian strikers at the Diego Maradona Stadium.
