On Monday, Victor Osimhen was awarded the Foreign Athlete of the Year award by the Foreign Press Association of Italy.
After accepting the award; Osimhen unintentionally stirred up some controversy when he was asked about playing in the English Premier League in the future. Many media outlets and social media channels took the quote out of context by only publishing a portion of the response.
Here is the full question posed by Reuters and the full response from Osimhen.
Question: you have played already in three of the five major leagues. Do you have ambitions to play in Spain or the Premier League and can you say what is the difference between playing in Italy and Germany and France, where you have already played?
Answer: I think playing in one of the top five leagues in the world is an amazing feeling for me and a good feat. And of course a lot of people worldwide consider the Premier League as the best and the strongest league. But of course, I’m on a process, I’m in a phase. Now I’m in one of the best leagues in the world which is the Italian Serie A. Of course, I’m working so hard to make sure that I achieve my dream of playing in the Premier League some day. But like I said earlier, it’s a process and I just want to continue on this momentum and to do well. But of course, in Italy it’s a different kind of football. It’s really intensive and of course the fans are really, really, really very loud, even when we are not playing well or when we are playing and they see a player on the street or in a restaurant, they want to show their love and appreciation for these players and also, wish them well and continue to support them. So I think for me, in this aspect, Italian Serie A is the best.
