Victor Osimhen scored a brace to help Napoli defeat Udinese 2-1 making it his second consecutive match-winning brace after he had also scored twice in the 2-1 win against Hellas Verona last week.
That makes it four goals in his last two Serie A games and six in his previous seven, giving him an edge in the ongoing battle with Dusan Vlahovic for the title of best young striker in the Serie A this season.
And although Vlahovic has scored 20 league goals this season compared to Osimhen’s 11, the Nigerian has played seven less games than his rival and has nine fewer starts than the Serbian.
Here are three aspects of football in which Victor Osimhen is better than Dusan Vlahovic.
Finishing
To the naked eye, it appears Vlahovic is the better finisher of the two but the numbers suggest otherwise. Osimhen has scored 11 goals off 65 total shots and 21 shots on target which means more than half the time Osimhen shoots on target, he scores.
The Nigerian striker boasts a 16% shot conversion rate and a staggering 52% conversion rate for shots on target.
Vlahovic, on the other hand, has managed 20 goals from 37 shots on target which is also quite good but according to FBRef, he has 0.41 goals per shot on target slightly less than Osimhen’s 0.47.
Bear in mind that Vlahovic has also played almost 900 more minutes of league football than Osimhen this season for two separate teams, so the fact that Osimhen is even close is highly impressive.
Anyone who watches Osimhen knows that he is a hustler, extremely mobile and intentional about sniffing out opportunities which affects his shot creation stats positively.
Osimhen has 37 shot creation actions from 19 league games this season (excluding the Udinese match) which leaves him with 2.46 shot creation actions per 90 minutes, marginally better than Vlahovic’s 2.38 shot creation actions per 90.
Osimhen also has two defensive actions that led to a shot compared to Vlahovic with none, an ode to his hustling spirit.
Tackles/Pressure
Normally centre forwards should not be rated on tackles but when the comparison is so close, any tiebreakers are welcome.
Osimhen has 10 tackles this season, more than double Vlahovic’s total of four which indicates that he is a modern centre forward, aware of his responsibility to press with 226 pressures in 19 games compared to Vlahovic with 234 in 27 games so far.
In conclusion, it is quite clear that these players are similar and close that even their birthdays are exactly a month apart and despite Osimhen being a year and a month older than Vlahovic, this may just be a decade-long rivalry between peers.
