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Leeds United’s ninth signing of the summer comes ten days ahead of the transfer window closing. Let’s say hello (again) to Noah Okafor and work out who exactly is the man from Milan.
Okafor was born in Switzerland and joined his local top flight club FC Basel’s youth team aged nine, where I can say with a degree of certainty that he never played against Isaac Schmidt despite my extensive search of Transfermarkt.
Okafor made his full debut for FC Basel’s first team in July 2018 and scored in a 1-1 draw with Neuchatel Xamax. His first season in professional football ended with Basel winning the Swiss Cup. Okafor scored the opener in the semi-final and played the full ninety minutes in the final.
He joined Red Bull Salzburg in January 2020, halfway through his second season at Basel, presumably motivated by the opportunity to work with their coach Jesse Marsch. Okafor was signed as part of a crop aimed at replacing Red Bull’s outgoing striker. You might have heard of him — Erling Haaland?
His career in Austria got off to a slow start thanks to Covid putting a stop to football for three months, but Okafor hit the ground running when things restarted, scoring three times before the end of the season with Marsch using him as a forward or a winger, but not like a real winger. A Jesse Marsch winger.
Four seasons at Fizzy Salzburg gave him quite the trophy cabinet, as you can imagine. Four league titles, three Austrian Cups. He scored 34 goals and assisted another 23 in 110 matches for the Bull’s Piss franchise, which earned him a move to AC Milan.
He joined them a year after they’d won Serie A for the first time in over a decade and formed part of a huge summer transfer spend as the club combined Champions League money with the £50m earned by selling Sandro Tonali to Newcastle. In Okafor, Milan felt they were buying potential but that also meant they didn’t yet consider him a starting winger. It made sense because they had star player Rafael Leao on the left and Christian Pulisic on the right, a player who immediately found himself rejuvenated in Milan after a few tough years at Chelsea.
This limited Okafor to mostly substitute appearances in 2023/24, but he made a noticeable impact, scoring six goals and assisting three, including setting up the winner at St James’ Park against Newcastle in the Champions League.
Okafor had a knack of being in the right place at the right time late in matches, making the most of his pace and decent presence in the penalty area to score some very important goals, including a late winner at Udinese. The match had been quite charged, Milan walked off the pitch after Udinese fans racially abused Milan ‘keeper Mike Maignan in the first half.
With the match locked at 2-2, Okafor popped up to finish calmly from a corner in the 93rd minute.
Milan expected Okafor to kick on last season but injuries and a few underwhelming performances in Paulo Fonseca’s flawed side saw him dropped. Milan were something of a basket case last season and sat 8th in Serie A by the time an injured Okafor failed a medical at RB Leipzig before joining Napoli on loan for the rest of 2024/25.
He struggled to break into Napoli’s settled side as they chased a Serie A title that they eventually won. Okafor made only four substitute appearances and it seemed clear that head coach Antonio Conte didn’t really know how to use him in his team. Still, he got a winner’s medal and returned to Milan with more league titles than most of his teammates could boast.
Okafor has also won 24 caps for Switzerland since making his debut against Italy in November 2021.
We have very recent history. If this were the 1990s — or the Massimo Cellino days — we’d all be convinced that Okafor had been signed on the basis of his pre-season performance against Leeds in Dublin.
He started on the left wing that day and played the full ninety minutes. Okafor had compatriot Isaac Schmidt defending against him at right-back for Leeds, and he roasted the poor lad all day. It was a battle of two rusty players up against each other, but Okafor looked much sharper and Milan clearly felt the same, constantly working the ball down their left flank.
Okafor played his part in setting up the Milan goal with a nice backheel into the space he’d created for Samuel Chukwueze, who crossed to Santi Gimenez to score.
It’s not a moment, per se, but a three-match scoring run in the Champions League. Some Milan fans believe that Okafor was signed on the basis of his goal against them for RB Salzburg in a 1-1 draw back in September 2022.
Milan were champions of Italy and travelled to Austria for their first group match in that season’s Champions League with plenty of confidence, expecting an away win to start them off well.
Okafor received the ball on the edge of Milan’s area and sat defender Pierre Kalulu down before striking under goalkeeper Maignan to make it 1-0.
A week later, Okafor scored a 75th-minute equaliser against Chelsea in a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge and struck the only goal in a 1-0 win against Dinamo Zagreb in the next group match.
Again, not exactly a moment, but Okafor’s greatest issue so far in his career has been consistency thanks to a less than stellar injury record. He has missed 27 matches in the past two seasons thanks to a series of minor injuries, setbacks which damaged Milan’s confidence that he could be a starting player or relied upon to do the job they signed him to perform: act as Rafael Leao’s back-up.
A reliable second choice winger needs to be fit and available. There’s little doubt that Okafor had the explosiveness and eye for goal that made him a perfect impact player, but it wasn’t enough given that he is often returning to fitness rather than consistently being at full fitness and match sharpness.
As with all transfers, Fabrizio Romano did his best to spoil any element of surprise with his incessant updates about updates. But he did at least give us this photo:
🚨🟡🔵 EXCL: Noah Okafor, on his way to England as he signs in as new Leeds player later today! ✈️
4 year contract plus option to extend, fee around €20m to AC Milan. #LUFC pic.twitter.com/VeUn2Lt92d
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) August 20, 2025
Okafor and the boys, all sitting on their plane to Leeds. Sat beside Noah is his brother Elijah, who was recently released by FC Lugano in Switzerland. Behind him? Their carer/agent, presumably, and another guy with the same chin beard. Maybe they met at the barbers and there was a spare seat. The other Okafor brother, Isaiah, is also a professional footballer on the books at FC Zurich after leaving Bayer Leverkusen’s youth team.
Leeds announced the arrival of Okafor late on Thursday morning with an, erm, interesting teaser picture:
— Leeds United (@LUFC) August 21, 2025
Kind of sexy, kind of weird, right? I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall at that photoshoot as the photographer asks to take a shot of Okafor’s neck, from above.
With Leeds travelling to Arsenal this weekend, time was of the essence which means no private jet videos, but at least that was covered by Romano.
Okafor’s greatest assets are his pace and ability to beat defenders one–on-one. Leeds’ attack could do with a little more impact and direct running, as well as benefiting from Okafor’s goal presence. His best football at Milan came late in matches when they were chasing a goal and he’d often drift between wide areas and the space behind a centre-forward.
If he can stay fit, it’s likely we’ll see a lot of Okafor from the bench in the first half of 2025/26. It seems that Leeds are set on building a squad right now, rather than simply a starting XI and a player like Okafor is the type of risk that the club needs to take if they are to elevate the crop of players as a whole and avoid the situation they found themselves in during their last Premier League stint, when benches were often padded out with Under-21s who had no real first team experience.
If Okafor can sit a few defenders down, score some goals and give opposing managers something to think about when their players are tiring, it might just be £18m well spent. ⬢
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