Ademola Lookman: 4 facts you didn’t know about Super Eagles forward

Super Eagles forward Ademola Lookman has cemented his status as one of Africa’s most decorated footballers, Afrik-Foot reports.

He won the 2024 CAF African Player of the Year award, finishing 14th in the 2024 Ballon d’Or before completing a €40 million move to Atletico Madrid.

However, the wider career of the former RB Leipzig attacker is filled with lesser-known chapters that many Nigerian supporters may not fully appreciate.

The Wandsworth-born forward took an unusual route to the top of African football, spanning distinguished academic performance at his London school, an England youth international career that crossed his path with a World Cup title, a Europa League final that entered the European history books, and a historic Premier League debut.

4 facts you didn’t know about Ademola Lookman

1. He was an academic genius before football took over

Long before Lookman became a household name in African football, he was a very gifted student at St Thomas the Apostle College in Peckham, South London.

The school confirmed that Lookman achieved three A-stars and five A grades in his GCSE, an academic body of work that placed him among the top-performing students in his year group.

His PE teacher at St Thomas, Ally Young, acknowledged the dual excellence.

“Ademola was an outstanding all-round sportsman who shone at football, and he was strong academically as well.

“He was the kind of student who’d be here most nights till 6 o’clock studying for his exams and then he’d go and play football. He’s a great sporting role model but academically he was really committed too.

“When he was at Charlton he used to pop in quite a bit as obviously he was quite local.

Lookman’s ability to balance both disciplines through his late teens is a career quality that has shone in how he conducts himself as a person.

2. He won the FIFA U-20 World Cup with England in 2017

Lookman’s international allegiance now belongs to Nigeria, but his path to senior football took him through the England youth system first, and one of those England youth chapters produced a World Cup title.

The forward was part of the England U-20 squad that won the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup in South Korea, a generational achievement that also included eventual senior internationals Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Dominic Solanke and Fikayo Tomori.

His subsequent decision to switch international allegiance to Nigeria in 2022 does not remove that World Cup from his personal honours list, and it makes him one of the very few Super Eagles internationals in history to also hold a World Cup winners’ medal at any level.

3. He is the first African to score a hat-trick in a major UEFA final

The 2024 UEFA Europa League final in Dublin produced the most decisive individual performance by a Nigerian in a European club showpiece.

Lookman scored a hat-trick for Atalanta in the 3-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen, single-handedly ending Xabi Alonso’s unbeaten Bundesliga season and delivering Atalanta their first-ever major trophy.

The wider historical context makes the achievement even more significant. Lookman’s three goals were only the sixth hat-trick ever scored in the final of a major UEFA club competition, and the first in a UEFA Cup or Europa League final in 49 years since Jupp Heynckes’ hat-trick for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the 1975 UEFA Cup final.

He became the first African player in the history of European club competition to score a hat-trick in a major UEFA final, a record that will have his name etched eternally.

4. He scored on his Premier League debut against Manchester City in the 95th minute

Long before the Bergamo hat-trick or the Atletico Madrid signature, Lookman’s professional football career opened with a cinematic moment against Pep Guardiola’s side.

Everton signed Lookman from Charlton Athletic in January 2017, and handed him a Premier League debut against Manchester City at Goodison Park.

Then Everton head coach Ronald Koeman introduced Lookman as a 90th-minute substitute in a 4-0 rout of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, and the Nigerian teenager scored with his first meaningful touch of the game to complete the scoring.

A debut goal at 19 years of age, against a Manchester City side that would eventually go on to build the Premier League dynasty of the following decade, is exactly the type of high-profile individual introduction to top-tier football that has since characterised Lookman’s whole career.