Nigeria’s Super Eagles’ attacker, Ademola Lookman, has emerged as the Atalanta ‘Player of the Season’ following his spectacular 2023/2024 season for the Italian side that culminated in the team winning the Europa League title for the first time.
The Nigerian forward won the coveted award back-to-back at the Bergamo-based side.
Lookman was instrumental to Atalanta winning the UEFA Europa League title, scoring all the three goals in the 3-0 defeat of Bayer Leverkusen in the final.
Atalanta announced Lookman as the winner on the club’s official website yesterday.
According to Atalanta: “It’s him again, Ademola Lookman! The reigning champion defends his title and is crowned straight-a student for the second year in a row after staving off an unsparing competition, to the point of both bringing the contest to an overtime runoff and stepping the pose down up to the Instagram profile after the regular session ended in a tie. Kudos to Molafor his back-to-back Player of the Season!” it noted.
Speaking about his contribution to the team’s success, the club also noted: “Lookman is both the team’s second-best goalscorer (17 nets) and assist provider (11 key passes) in all competitions -only surpassed by Scamacca and de Keteleaere respectively; Lookman is the only Atalanta player to have scored an hattrick in all competitions this season; the Nigerian forward was also the player with the highest goal contribution across Europe’s Big-5 leagues with 14 nets favoured (namely, 8 goals scored and 6 assists) since April.”
The Nigerian had a brilliant AFCON experience with Super Eagles who finished as runners up in Côte d’Ivoire where he scored three goals in the tournament.
His exploits for both club and country now puts him in strong contention to win the next ‘African Footballer of the Year’ award which will come up before the end of the year at a venue yet to be announced by the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
