The year 2017 was one of the most prolific for the lower categories of the English team. Their Under-17 and Under-20 teams were proclaimed world champions and several of the players who formed those teams, such as Foden and Palmer, born in 2000, and Solanke and Calvert-Lewin, from 1997, have reached the senior team. three lions established as stars of the Premier League. However, other players on those teams were not so lucky. An example of this is Ademola Lookman (London, 1997), who was part of that U-20 and who went from great promise to globetrotter.
A youth player from Charlton Athletic, where he began to excel, he signed at the age of 18 for Everton and quickly caught the attention of Leipzig, who paid 18 million for the forward in the summer of 2019. Lookman did not perform as expected in that first season in the Red Bull team, which in the following seasons decided to loan it to different Premier teams (Fulham, Leicester and, again, Everton). His progress slowed down and the English federation forgot about the player, who in February 2022 accepted the call from Nigeria, the country of origin of his parents.
Lookman seemed destined to have a career without high flying until Atalanta knocked on his door in the summer of 2022. The forward recovered his smile and his scoring nose in Bergamo (he has scored 22 goals in 56 games with the Italian team) and has become the best possible shield for Osimhen in the Nigerian team. Lookman is Nigeria’s top scorer in the African Cup, being decisive in the knockout phase, in which he scored two goals against Cameroon in the round of 16 (2-0) and another yesterday against Angola (0-1), which helped the green eagles qualify for the semifinals of the tournament.