Victor Boniface: A rare talent who has already overcome a career’s worth of misfortune

This summer, we are running a series profiling 50 exciting players under the age of 25 — who they are, how they play, and why they could be attracting interest in the coming transfer windows.

So far, we have run the rule over a striker on Manchester United’s radar, Gen-Z’s answer to Sergio Busquets and the France forward who has gone from zero to €100million in the space of a year. You can find all our profiles until now here.

Advertisement

Next up is a new — and exciting — Bundesliga arrival…

On Saturday, Victor Boniface made his first appearance at Bayer Leverkusen’s BayArena. After 70 minutes of a friendly against West Ham, he was substituted to thunderous applause, to the sound of his name being chanted and having already won the heart of his new city.

Pre-season or not, it was exhilarating to watch. Boniface scored with a crisp half-volley. He also won a penalty and forced an own goal. Throughout the game, he played with flamboyance, flair and craft. It was a stirring home debut and everybody in attendance left convinced that Leverkusen have spent €20m very wisely and signed a centre-forward who will make them extremely dangerous.

But that is the future. And Victor Boniface’s past is an important part of his story.

A product of the Real Sapphire football academy in Lagos, Nigeria, he took his first steps in Europe at just 18, joining Norwegian side Bodo-Glimt. Quietly, the club has become a key staging post for developing talent. In recent years, Jens Petter Hauge (AC Milan), Patrick Berg (Lens), Erik Botheim (Krasnodar) and Joel Mvuka (Lorient) have all been sold for significant, seven-figure fees and, most recently, midfielder Hugo Vetlesen joined Club Bruges for nearly €8m.

On arriving in 2019, Boniface — then a