Ademola Lookman still has his shirt from May’s Europa League final, the one he wore as he delivered one of the greatest individual performances at a major final in the game’s modern era.
He still has his boots from that night too, the left with which he scored his first and third goals, and the right that drove in the second. And of course, he still has the match ball, signed by all his Atalanta team-mates and club staff after their 3-0 win against Bayer Leverkusen in Dublin.
He has another memento too.
A few days after that final, which had fans flocking to the airport to welcome the players home, lining the streets back to the training ground, blocking the road and setting off flares, a man approached Lookman. He said he wanted to give him a present. A few days later, the guy returned and, overcome with emotion, tearfully handed over his gift: a wooden board neatly engraved with the details of the final, the badges of the two teams, the Europa League trophy, and the details of the goals: 12′ Lookman, 26′ Lookman, 75′ Lookman.
It took this moment, this physical gift, for Lookman to realise how grateful the Atalanta fans were to him for his hat-trick against Leverkusen, winning the club their first-ever European trophy, and first of any kind in 61 years. “This situation made me really sit and think to myself,” he tells The Athletic. “I was taken aback, and really touched by that. It was, ‘Wow, this is deep. Really deep’.”
That final was under three months ago, but the new season is upon us. Lookman is set to play in the UEFA Super Cup against Champions League winners Real Madrid in Poland tonight (Wednesday) and is thrilled by the opportunity.
It is still worth looking back on the night he made history. His was only the sixth hat-trick to be scored in a UEFA competition final, and the first since 1975. He is now on a list that includes Alfredo Di Stefano, and Ferenc Puskas twice. Lookman proudly notes he is the first African to achieve the feat.
Lookman celebrates with the Europa League trophy (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
The 26-year-old explains his mental process simply: “Getting my little wins, getting my Ws every single day. And obviously those little Ws turn into big Ws. That’s my goal, that’s how I look at things.”
Watching Lookman in that final, single-handedly destroying Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen, who had not lost all season in 51 games, was to see the perfect combination of his natural gifts and the learning process he has been through.
London-born Lookman has always been an unusual talent, a match-winner whose skills were first developed in urban cage football and in Sunday league sides. Combine that with the past two seasons developing at Gian Piero Gasperini’s Atalanta and you have a unique mix of instinct, skill and application.
Or, as former England midfielder Joe Cole memorably put it during UK broadcaster TNT Sports’ coverage of that final: “The first two goals were for his club. The third was for the streets.”
Cole said it was a goal born in the small, caged-in football pitches that dot south London’s housing estates and streets. Lookman smiles in agreement at what Cole said. That third goal — a stepover away from his defender, shifting the ball onto his left foot, finishing hard and high — was one he has been scoring his whole life.
A HAT-TRICK FOR LOOKMAN IN THE FINAL!
TAKE A BOW 👏
📺 Watch the #UELfinal live on @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/wpJS9luDBN
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 22, 2024
“I definitely get where he’s coming from,” Lookman says. “I’ve done that so many, many times, pretty much all the time growing up. It was a trademark, what we used to do in the cages, trying different finishes. It was second nature to do it, and for it to come off in the fashion it did was amazing. Everybody knows that (move). If you go to the streets, in the cages, everything is about sharp, quick movements. Bang, bang. It’s all… rhythmical.”
Lookman grew up playing in cages all around south London but a few still stand out to him.
Brunswick Park, between Camberwell and Peckham. ‘Yellow Brick’, the Bells Garden Estate just off Peckham High Street. Lilian Baylis Old School, with an artificial turf by The Oval cricket ground in Kennington. Burgess Park’s artificial turf, where Jadon Sancho and Reiss Nelson learned the game a few years after Lookman did.
The skills that Lookman adopted in those days are still part of his game now.
“I owe a lot to that time,” he says. “I was just enjoying playing with my friends. With friends comes competition, playing in the cages and showing off skills. Having that competition, wanting to get better and honing my skills. During that period I was just learning, and now I’m still learning, but in different ways. If you can always learn, there’s no cap on how much you can improve.”
So Lookman knew from a young age that he wanted to be a footballer and to get to the top. He still has the same motivation now he did almost 20 years ago: “The fire still burns the same way it burned when I was seven or eight years old. It’s still the same. It’s never really departed. It may have taken a knock in confidence, but it’s never been fully put out. The fire is always there. It’s always there.”
Education and roots are so important to Lookman, and he tells two stories from his time at Peckham Park Primary School. One is of the teacher who always used to say to him, “Know thyself.” “That stuck with me,” he says, “because knowing thyself means staying true to yourself and what you believe in. I worked hard to have the opportunities that I have today. Obviously, I’m blessed by the big man upstairs, I’m blessed to do what I do. I don’t take that lightly.”
The PE teacher from Lookman’s primary school invited Lookman and some of his friends to come and play for his Sunday league side, Waterloo FC. Lookman loved it there, and anyone who watched the TV coverage of the Europa final will remember Felix Emanus, another of the coaches from Waterloo, who spoke at length about how thrilled he was to see Lookman star on the biggest stage.
Emanus was so proud and thrilled that he was moved to tears, reading out a message that he had sent to Lookman the morning of the game against Leverkusen, calling for “one of those Waterloo performances you used to believe in as a kid when you were unplayable”.
“I cried when the third goal went in”
One of Ademola Lookman’s former youth coaches with an emotional interview after his MOTM performance in a European final ❤️ pic.twitter.com/MW45Mgn3yF
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 22, 2024
Lookman is still hugely grateful for Emanus’ advice over the years, calling him “the main man” and a “mentor”. And he says he was integral to him learning to be effective on the pitch. “He was the person who made me understand the importance of being a killer,” he says. “He was the first person who put the idea in my head about scoring goals, being effective, how you can influence the team. At 11 or 12, he started instilling that into me. He really made me look at football differently.”
The next step in Lookman’s rise relied on one brilliant performance in a friendly.
In April 2014, Charlton Athletic Under-16s organised a game against a London FA Under-16 team, made up of players drawn from Sunday league rather than academy sides. Lookman was the best player on the pitch. Charlton immediately offered him a trial, and from there a scholarship. Again, it was about refining his style, not replacing it.
Charlton academy boss Steve Avory told me when I was with UK newspaper The Independent that they were “very conscious not to knock that innate talent, that love of football, out of him”.
“I can just use one word to describe him: aura,” Lookman says of Avory now. “When he was coaching, it was the importance of detail, first touches, passes, weight of pass. Those little details he was very, very big on. It made me pay attention and key into that detail a lot. And he was definitely a big part of me going from under-18s to under-21s to the first team at Charlton.”
It did not take Lookman long playing for Charlton in the Championship and League One to earn a move to Everton of the Premier League at age 19.
His journey from there to Atalanta is well known — and explained in great detail here by The Athletic’s Sarah Shephard. As are his exploits with Nigeria, where his parents are from, who he helped to reach the Africa Cup of Nations final this year. But Lookman never forgets where he learned his love of the game and the people who helped him along the way. He is still very close to Eamon Connolly, the headmaster of his secondary school, St Thomas the Apostle, in Nunhead, south-east London, and goes back there to see him whenever he can.
Lookman was a prefect at school and still wants to contribute to the school community. When he is there, the children ask him about being a footballer. So what would he tell an 11-year-old with similar dreams of making it to the top?
“Anything is possible if you put your mind to it,” Lookman says. “If that’s what you truly believe in, what you truly want, you’ve got to put the work in. You’ve got to stay true to yourself. If you’re doing everything in your power to get there, you will get there.
“It’s all well and good having the talent, you’ve got to have the drive and dedication to want to be there. Your talent is your talent, that’s what God has given you. The drive and the motivation, that is the fire that burns within you.
“If that fire burns every day, you’ve got a chance.”
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Alex Pantling – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)