Ademola Olajade Alade Aylola Lookman, to give him his full name, may well end up being one that got away for England. But who could realistically blame him? Nigeria came calling, and by that time he’d already played Champions League football for Julian Nagelsmann at RB Leipzig, and in the Premier League for Everton, Fulham, and Leicester.
By Ian King
He’d played for England at U19, U20 and U21 level, but despite assurances that he was “in my plans” and the fact that he was very much a known quantity, the call from Gareth Southgate never came. Earlier this year Lookman scored twice for Nigeria in their 2-0 win against Cameroon in the second round of AFCON, and then the only goal to beat Angola in the quarter-finals. He was, as he is now, 26 years of age. Nigeria may have lost the final, but why spend your life waiting around when you can get on with living it?
By half-time in Dublin, he’d scored twice in the final of the Europa League and Atalanta had one hand on the trophy. Both were outstandingly taken, but they also came about as a result of surprisingly sluggish football from their opponent, which extended throughout the entirety of the match. Bayer Leverkusen were out-played and out-pressed at all points. They had possession nicked from them in midfield, and they gave it away apparently voluntarily.
And this was the supposedly impregnable Bayer Leverkusen. The Europa League final was their 52nd match of the season in all competitions and there remains one to play, the DFB-Pokal final against Kaiserslautern on Saturday. Of the 51 games they’d played going into last night’s match, they’d won 42 and drawn nine. This would be a remarkable record for a team spending all the money in the world. Leverkusen’s record transfer fee is the €32 million they paid Hoffenheim for Kerem Demirbay.
Their total annual wage bill is estimated to be €63.4m (£54m). That’s about the same as Wolverhampton Wanderers. And even this relatively modest amount–by English standards–overshadows Atalanta, whose record transfer fee is the €29.1m (£24.7m) they paid Almería for El Bilal Touré last summer. Their annual wage bill is estimated to be €45m (£38.3m). That’s about the same as Burnley. The two clubs’ combined wage bills is in the same ballpark as that of West Ham United, and less than half that of Manchester United.
To the casual observer, this record-breaking Bayer Leverkusen team looks like an extremely late April Fool’s Day joke. “Granit Xhaka? Who’s picking this team?” In an era of celebrity footballers, this is not a team of celebrities, and we’re still too close to them to be able to see their achievements already this season for what they truly are. The first team to go unbeaten for a whole season in the Bundesliga, in the process ending Bayern Munich’s run of eleven in a row. They may yet end this season with a domestic double.
Unlike Leverkusen, Atalanta haven’t been pulling up any trees in the league this season although, barring something fairly spectacular happening over the course of their final two matches, they’re nailed on to finish fifth in Serie A, which is enough for Champions League football next season. They landed in Dublin in excellent form, too, with five straight wins in the league, though it had also only been a week since they lost to Juventus in the final of the Coppa Italia.
Leverkusen’s reputation this season has been as the team who wouldn’t lay down and die. They’d scored 15 goals in added time in all competitions, with 33 coming after the 80th minute. But on this occasion there didn’t seem to be any room for them to move and no route whatsoever for them back into the game once behind. With 17 minutes left Lookman pinged the ball into the top corner to stretch Atalanta’s lead beyond anything that even Leverkusen at their most relentlessly zombie-like could ever pull back.
Hat-tricks in European finals are rare. The only players to have scored one in a European Cup or Champions League final are Ferenc Puskas (twice; for Real Madrid in 1960 and 1962), Alfredo di Stefano (also in 1960), and Pierino Prati for Milan against Ajax in 1969. With no-one having ever scored one in a European Cup Winners Cup final or a single-legged UEFA Cup or Europa League final, Lookman joins Puskas, Di Stefano, Prati and Jupp Heynckes, who scored one for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the 1975 UEFA Cup final second leg as one of five players to have scored a hat-trick in a European final.
But Lookman’s performance was really the icing on a spectacular team performance from Atalanta in Dublin. Stronger in every position and with a game-plan that smothered Leverkusen, they thoroughly deserved their win, their first European trophy and their first trophy of any description since 1963. To have beaten a team with a record such as Bayer Leverkusen’s this season so comprehensively is worthy of high praise indeed.
And Lookman deserved both his first medal since winning the U20 World Cup with England in 2017 and his place in the competition’s record books. This is a player who has taken a circuitous route to get to this level. He took his opportunity at RB Leipzig and he’s taken the chance at Atalanta, too. And he only cost them €15m, too.
(Images from IMAGO)
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