How much did Lille actually earn for the €70m sale of Victor Osimhen? | OneFootball

Over four years after Lille OSC sold Victor Osimhen (25) to Serie A. The Ligue 1 club’s president has now opened up about how much they pocketed in the deal.

During the summer of 2020, Les Dogues let Osimhen join SSC Napoli for €70m with the potential to rise up to €80m with add-one, a record for the Italian club at the time.

The Nigerian’s value went up significantly during his time with Lille, where he was named the club’s Player of the Season in 2019-20.

Osimhen flourished for a few seasons in Serie A, helping Napoli capture the league title in 2022-23. As for Lille, they won the Ligue 1 title in their first season without him in 2020-21.

Club president Olivier Létang says they didn’t get as much money for his sale as one may have assumed. Speaking to L’Équipe, Létang says they collected a mere €7m as part of that deal, due to commissions, intermediary fees and capital gains. There were no retro-commissions at the time, according to the Lille president, who adds that: “LOSC earned much more money from the sales of Carlos Baleba (€30m to Brighton & Hove Albion) and Amadou Onana (€40 to Everton).”

That small amount of money earned by the man currently on loan at Galatasaray is one of the many mysteries that investigators are trying to unravel.

Investigations into that deal and others around that time are being reviewed by French and Italian courts to shed light on those deals.

GFFN | Joël Lefevre