Victor Osimhen has never been the kind of footballer who lets the game come to him. Anyone who has watched him play knows that. But in a deeply moving new essay for The Players’ Tribune titled “A Prayer From the Gutter,” the Super Eagles talisman takes us somewhere far more personal than a football pitch. He takes us to Olusosun, a landfill in Lagos, and the version of himself that existed long before the goals, the glory, and the bright lights of European football. Victor’s story is the ultimate grass-to-grace narrative, but he doesn’t sugarcoat the grass part. He writes about scavenging Africa’s largest landfill for scraps, about the specific, desperate hope of finding a left-foot Nike in a size 8 and a right-foot Puma in a size 9 on the same day, just to have something that resembled a...