Ademola Lookman is no longer a surprise

On Monday evening Ademola Lookman was named African Footballer of the Year, a prestigious award (also called the “African Ballon d’Or”) won in the past by strong and talented players such as George Weah, Samuel Eto’o and Victor Osimhen. Lookman is 27 years old and was rewarded for what he did in 2024 with the Nigerian national team and especially with Atalanta. In May he became the first player since 1975 to score a hat-trick in a European final, the Europa League win against Bayer Leverkusen, and in general he was instrumental in many of Atalanta’s victories. Furthermore, at the beginning of the year he reached the final of the Africa Cup of Nations with Nigeria, then lost against the Ivory Coast, scoring the decisive goals in the round of 16 against Cameroon (a brace) and in the quarter-finals against Angola.

At the start of the season, Lookman seems to have further raised his level of play: he has already scored 8 goals and made 4 assists in the 13 games played in the league, contributing to the ten consecutive victories that took Atalanta to first place. He also scored three goals in the Champions League, the last of which last week against Real Madrid, in a match in which, despite Atalanta’s defeat (3-2) and the presence of many phenomenal players on the pitch, he was was awarded best of the match by UEFA.

Before his arrival at Atalanta in the summer of 2022, however, few thought that he could establish himself as one of the best strikers in Europe, becoming a spectacular footballer in his play but also intelligent in his movements and very concrete. In the previous seasons, spent between England and Germany, he had shown talent, but he had not been continuous enough to be a reference in a team that wants to compete for ambitious goals, as Atalanta is today. In Bergamo, however, right from the start he seemed like a different player, more aware and effective, and it is difficult not to recognize the importance of Gian Piero Gasperini in his explosive growth. Lookman himself, in an interview given last week to BBC Sportacknowledged that going to Atalanta changed his career.

Before Atalanta, Lookman had scored a maximum of 6 goals in a championship and 8 total in a season, in 2021-2022 with Leicester. In 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 with Everton and Leipzig he had struggled a lot to get a starting place and hadn’t scored a single league goal for two consecutive seasons. He was already partly a fast and strong external attacker in dribbling, that is, in overcoming opponents, but he was considered not very concrete. After loaning him to Leicester, Leipzig sold him to Atalanta for less than 10 million euros.

At Atalanta his statistics, his impact on matches and his status changed almost immediately, since he scored 5 goals in October: already then an article on the in-depth website Last Man he defined him as «one of the most intelligent players in Serie A», for his skill in making the right movements and choices in the team’s attacking actions. With Atalanta he has always scored more than 10 goals in the league (this season he scored 15 in 2022-2023, 17 in the last season and in this one he is already at 11) and is honing a certain aptitude for being decisive in the most important matches: this is demonstrated by the hat-trick in the Europa League final last May, but also by the brace scored in the 3-0 with which Atalanta won in Naples at the beginning of November, or the goal in the final minutes of the victory against Milan at the beginning of December.

The brace scored at Napoli on November 3rd

Gasperini is known for being a very demanding coach with his players, but also capable of making them improve and express themselves to the maximum of their possibilities. Lookman is playing the central years of his career, those in which a player usually reaches his highest level, in a team that seems made specifically to enhance his best characteristics, because Gasperini’s Atalanta always plays with intensity, in a courageous and quick, with many players participating in the attacking actions.

In Atalanta everyone has to work hard in both phases of the game (defensive and offensive), but the most talented players are given a lot of freedom to look for the best position and play for the occasion each time. In every match Lookman therefore has many opportunities to exploit his speed, his dribbling, his ability to kick on goal with both his right and left foot or to make decisive passes for teammates who enter.

In short, with Gasperini he became a tactically disciplined footballer but at the same time he has not lost his instinct, the speed technique that he developed when he was a child and played in the cage-like pitches typical of south London (Lookman was born in England to Nigerian parents and, despite having grown up there, he chose to play for Nigeria in the national team). In this regard, commenting on the Europa League final for TNT Sportsin England, the former footballer Joe Cole said that the first two goals he had scored for Atalanta, while the third «was for the streets», in the sense that it was as if he had scored them for the street pitch team.

Before the final, Leverkusen had not lost in 51 games: then they met Ademola Lookman

In addition to winning the award for best African player, this year he had already finished fourteenth in the overall Ballon d’Or ranking (he was the only African among the 30 candidates). Commenting on the result, Gasperini praised his “fantastic evolution” and said he was “among the top” in the world. Last summer for a period it seemed that he might leave Atalanta, given that Paris Saint-Germain and other European teams were interested in buying him, but in the end he remained in Bergamo: if after sixteen matchdays Atalanta is first and legitimately aspires to compete for the Scudetto victory, it also owes it to Lookman’s plays.