Nine years after a senior teammate turned him away from a hotel room door at his first Super Eagles camp, Victor Osimhen finally told the story on a Twitch stream — and it’s exactly as good as it sounds.
Victor Osimhen has been back in Lagos this week, arm in a cast, Champions League dream over, and apparently with nothing but time. He filled some of it with a late-night Twitch livestream alongside comedian Carter Efe in the early hours of Saturday, and in the middle of it he reached back to 2017 and pulled out one of the more human stories you’ll hear from a footballer at the top of the game.
It was his first Super Eagles call-up. He was a teenager, nervous, eager to make an impression, and had already spotted Kelechi Iheanacho across the camp. Iheanacho was at Manchester City at the time, one of the most talked-about young Nigerian forwards in the world. For a kid still finding his feet in international football, getting close to a player like that meant something.
“When I came, I met Iheanacho,” Osimhen told Carter Efe. “And I told him, ‘ah, see me, I’m gonna carry your boots.’ So he said I should come to his room, he gave me his room number.”
So far, so straightforward. A young player making a connection, getting an invitation, heading upstairs. Then came the door.
The Unnamed Roommate
Osimhen knocked. A senior player, Iheanacho’s roommate, opened the door. Whatever Osimhen saw in that moment told him immediately that his visit was not welcome. He was turned away on the spot, sent back down the corridor without so much as a word passed between them and Iheanacho.
“I don’t just want to mention the name,” Osimhen said carefully. “He had a roommate. So, as I knocked on the door, the roommate opened the door. So, he just bounced me out of the room.”
He has kept that name to himself for nine years and he’s keeping it still. The story isn’t about settling scores. It’s about what happened next, which is the part that clearly stayed with him far more than the slight itself.
What Iheanacho Did
Iheanacho found out. He wasn’t happy. He tracked Osimhen down, took him by the hand, and walked him back through the door that had just been closed in his face.
“Iheanacho showed up and was angry at him, saying, ‘you see that someone came to see me in my room and you are chasing him from my room.’ So Iheanacho took my hand and took me inside,” Osimhen said.
It’s a small moment in the context of a career that has since taken Osimhen to Napoli, a Serie A title, a Champions League run with Galatasaray, and 26 goals in a single season in Turkey. But small moments shape people. The teammate who shuts the door and the one who opens it again are not the same kind of person, and footballers remember the difference.
The Context Behind the Story
Osimhen is in Nigeria this week not entirely by choice. He fractured his right forearm during Galatasaray’s 4-0 Champions League defeat to Liverpool at Anfield on March 18, playing through the pain until halftime before being withdrawn. His arm is now in a cast and a decision on whether he requires surgery is still pending. The trip home had been planned before the injury during the international break, but the broken arm has added a medical dimension to what was already a scheduled visit.
He was not included in Eric Chelle’s squad for the Super Eagles’ friendlies against Iran and Jordan. So with no football to play, a Twitch stream at an odd hour with Carter Efe was apparently exactly what he needed. Nigerian fans hoping to catch every Super Eagles update through the friendlies can also find the latest odds and the Bet9ja promotion code for this month’s international fixtures here.
As for the unnamed player who turned Osimhen away from that hotel room door in 2017? He almost certainly doesn’t know the story has just been told to thousands of people online. Somewhere out there, he’s probably trying to figure out if it was him.
📌 Did You Know?
- Kelechi Iheanacho was just 20 years old himself when Osimhen first encountered him at the Super Eagles camp in 2017, having only made his senior international debut for Nigeria the previous year in March 2016.
- Osimhen’s first senior Super Eagles appearance came on October 7, 2017, in a 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Zambia in Uyo, when he came on as a substitute in a match Nigeria won 1-0.
- Carter Efe, the comedian who hosted the Twitch stream with Osimhen, is best known in Nigeria for his viral impression of Davido and became a household name after his 2022 collaboration with Berri Tiga on the song “Machala,” a tribute to the music star.
- Iheanacho was part of Manchester City’s first-team squad between 2015 and 2017, during which he scored 14 Premier League goals, before joining Leicester City in a deal worth around £25 million in the summer of 2017.
- Osimhen has previously credited Odion Ighalo, John Obi Mikel, and Didier Drogba as the figures who most shaped his career development, calling Ighalo in particular a mentor figure who guided him during his earliest years as a professional.
- Nigeria’s Super Eagles hotel camp culture has a well-documented tradition of senior players holding authority over room allocations and access, a hierarchy that dates back decades and was a common subject of discussion among players of the 1994 World Cup generation.
- Osimhen was born on December 29, 1998, in Lagos, the last of six children. His mother passed away when he was a child, and his early years involved selling water and recharge cards on the streets of Lagos before football changed the trajectory of his life entirely.
