KEVIN MCCALLUM: From street football to Atalanta’s Europa League Cup hero

In the maelstrom of joy in the minutes after Atalanta had lifted the Europa League Cup in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Wednesday night, the love of a family and a fairy-tale life in football shone brightest.

Ademola Olajade Alade Aylola Lookman, born in London to Nigerian parents, has walked a winding path to this day, to the night when he scored a thunderous hat-trick to overcome a team that had not been beaten in 361 days. Bayer Leverkusen, coached by Xabi Alonso, were left to ponder what might have been. Lookman, their destroyer, will be wondering what might be from this day forward.

“That’s my son,” shouted Ademola Sr as he hugged his boy, who had been enveloped by his mother shortly before. The images of that moment, when love and joy were writ large, when the achievement of a 26-year-old from Wandsworth in southeast London was celebrated with wonder and belief, will live forever with the Lookman family and the people of Bergamo.

Lookman was playing park football for Waterloo FC in Lambeth at the age of 16, and, having been ignored by football academies, was beginning to consider his future. He had got five As, four Bs and a C in his GCSEs. College looked to be on the cards. Then he got picked for London Counties to play a friendly against Charlton’s academy team in 2013.

“I started that game on the bench but someone got injured and they put me on. We lost the game 1-0 but Charlton liked what they saw and they invited me back,” he told Don McRae of The Guardian in 2021.

From Charlton, where he made his first team debut at 17, he moved to Everton for £11m, scoring on his first game as a substitute in a 4-0 pasting of Manchester City. He was part of the England team that won the Fifa Under-20 World Cup. At 20, the then Everton manager Sam Allardyce, wanted him to go on loan to Derby Country, but he insisted on being allowed to be loaned to RB Leipzig instead. 

He signed a five-year contract with Leipzig, but his path faltered and he was sent on loan to Fulham and then Leicester, before Atalanta coach Gian Piero ­Gasperini was tipped off about this kid who had magic in his feet and steel in his soul.

“We had a senior manager at Atalanta who had worked at Leicester [Lee Congerton], who thought he was a useful player. Nobody could ever imagine he could make this much progress,” said ­Gasperini on Wednesday night. “He wasn’t overly prolific in England. I changed his position to a more attacking role. Tonight he achieved something which will remain in the annals of football history — a stunning hat-trick.”

Sometimes skill needs luck and the right direction to be unfolded and unleashed. Lookman has scored 30 goals in 76 games for Atalanta, which is more than the number he had scored at his other clubs in total. He is now just the sixth player to score a hat-trick in a European final, a feat that has not been achieved since Jupp Heynckes did so for Borussia Monchengladbach in the 1975 Uefa Cup.

Lookman had grown up playing a game called “curbs” in south London, which, wrote Henry Winter on Thursday was “when space was found on estates for street games, Lookman mastered the trick of playing 1-2s off the curb to beat an opponent. It was a skill that served him well for amateur side Waterloo and in the cages of south London that have produced so much talent, including Jadon Sancho, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi.

“You had to be quick and brave and skilful, operating in tight spaces, avoiding the unforgiving metal, not going to ground on the harsh concrete, relying on your wits and tricks like ‘curbs’ to elude older players often affronted at Lookman’s trickery.”

Joe Cole, watching on broadcaster TNT, was full of praise for Lookman’s journey from the cages to the Aviva: “For Lookman, a kid from Wandsworth, who played in the cages, playing street football, going around the houses, not finding a place where he’s at home, he’s found a home here. They will love him forever. His name will be etched into the club’s history. This is what the moments are all about. A kid, who couldn’t find a club, couldn’t find a home, super talented, he’s gone and done it. Fair play to him and his family. Enjoy the moment.”

It is a moment that will last forever — a son, a mother and a father, and a dream realised.