Victor Osimhen, a striker for the Super Eagles, tied the score at 1-1 against Udinese on Thursday to give Napoli the Serie A championship.
The Nigerian scored the crucial equalizer in the 52nd minute to help Napoli, which needed a draw to win the Scudetto for the first time in 33 years, win the title with five games remaining.
The winner was determined by Osimhen’s second-half equalizer for the league champions, who last won the championship in 1990 under Diego Maradona’s captaincy.
With 80 points after 33 games, Napoli led the league, while Lazio was in second place with 64 points.
At 64, Luciano Spalletti, the manager of Napoli and a two-time Coppa Italia champion with Roma, becomes the oldest manager to win the Serie A.
On BBC Radio 5 Live, European broadcaster James Horncastle stated: “No one picked Napoli to finish in the top four, much less win the league. It is exceptional. I don’t think you can say that everything has been entirely planned because there have been so many highlights.
second-placed “It all fits together, and it’s undoubtedly the result of Serie A’s dysfunction.
“They’ve won it with five games to spare, as much as this last week has felt like a disappointment because they didn’t wrap it up last week.”
It’s a very emotional time for Napoli supporters, who partied all night long.
With five games remaining, Napoli needed only a draw to take a commanding 16-point lead. In the 52nd minute, Serie A’s leading scorer Victor Osimhen equalized for Napoli, setting off raucous celebrations.
This is Napoli’s third victory in the top league of Italy and their first since the great Argentine Diego Maradona guided them to titles in 1987 and 1990. After Maradona passed away in November 2020, Napoli’s home stadium was given a new name in his honor.
On Sunday at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium, Napoli had a chance to win the championship, but they gave up a late equalizer to Salernitana, extending the wait by another four days. But after closest rivals Lazio defeated Sassuolo the day before, they knew going into Thursday’s game that a point would be sufficient.
In anticipation of a celebration that had been planned for more than three decades, 11,000 Napoli supporters traveled with the squad to the Dacia Arena in Udine, northern Italy. When the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium opened for spectators to watch the game, more than 50,000 fans were also anticipated there.