{"id":811447,"date":"2024-12-10T21:20:02","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T03:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/10\/playing-for-nigeria-changed-my-career-ademola-lookman-credits-super-eagles-for-career-growth\/"},"modified":"2024-12-10T21:20:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T03:20:02","slug":"playing-for-nigeria-changed-my-career-ademola-lookman-credits-super-eagles-for-career-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/10\/playing-for-nigeria-changed-my-career-ademola-lookman-credits-super-eagles-for-career-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPlaying for Nigeria changed my career\u201d \u2013 Ademola Lookman credits Super Eagles for career growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer <\/p>\n<div>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/soccernet.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/lookman.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img width=\"750\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/soccernet.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/lookman-750x500.jpg\" alt=\"Soccer Lookman after scoring the opener against Angola\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"   data-full-width=\"1280\" data-full-height=\"853\"><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Super Eagles and Atalanta forward, Ademola Olajade Lookman, has revealed his decision to don the green and white colours of Nigeria has yielded positive fruit in his international career, <a href=\"https:\/\/Soccernet.ng\">Soccernet.ng<\/a> reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 27-year-old was born in England, and represented the Three Lions youth team several times, and even won the FIFA U-20 World Cup in 2017, alongside Tottenham Hotspur\u2019s Dominic Solanke and Everton\u2019s Dominic Calvert-Lewin.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_142852\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-142852\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/soccernet.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/images-1-26.jpeg\" alt width=\"615\" height=\"409\"  ><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-142852\">Solanke and Lookman celebrating for the English youth team.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After several unsuccessful spells in England and Germany, a call-up to the Three Lions team wasn\u2019t on the cards for the former Everton man, and he opted to switch international allegiance to Nigeria. In the same year, he moved to Atalanta, and it\u2019s only been way up since then.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_130453\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-130453\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/soccernet.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/792999e2-12fb-4c4e-a698-794fe1a81fb8_ademola-lookmanrk0z0a7akwog1h1fzr107xzel-1024x576.jpg\" alt width=\"1024\" height=\"576\"  ><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-130453\">Lookman being celebrated by his teammates after scoring a hat-trick against Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the UEFA Europa League final.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He\u2019s achieved success for club and country in the past eighteen months, and mentioned his decision to play for the Super Eagles played a massive role in his uprising.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIt was massive. It was massive for me because that was really the big turning point in my career. I think ever since I put on the Super Eagles jersey, it\u2019s been fruitful you know, and we\u2019ve been able to achieve a lot as a team and we\u2019re still going as a team, but the camaraderie of the team is something that\u2019s very special within the squad.<\/p>\n<p>I think we shared that in the last AFCON, and we got to the final, but unfortunately we came up a bit short, but the foundations are there you know, and it\u2019s just a fantastic feeling to sit there with pride to represent my country,\u201d the ex-RB Leipzig forward said in an interview with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/OneJoblessBoy\/status\/1866384168592310478?t=LmrSMiuxpTUdskePKtH5Cg&#038;s=19\">Sporty TV<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ademola Lookman and William Troost-Ekong were the only Nigerians nominated for the 2024 CAF Player of the Year award, but the UEFA Europa League winner was the only Super Eagles star that made the final-five cut.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><img alt=\"Soccer Adefolahan Guerreiro\" src=\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/740e257566cac1cbb2887e0f85afd655?s=80&#038;d=mm&#038;r=g\"  height=\"80\" width=\"80\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\">\t\t<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/soccernet.ng\/author\/guerreiro\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tAdefolahan Guerreiro\t\t\t\t<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tAdefolahan is a multilingual journalist and writer at Soccernet Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>With a track record of involvement in College sports, Adefolahan is focused on crafting engaging football content and utilising his language skills and extensive sports knowledge to enhance content accessibility for a global audience.<\/p>\n<p>He has interviewed Nigerian stars like Finidi George, Junior Lokosa, and Abraham Onahi Ogbu.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/soccernet.ng\/2024\/12\/playing-for-nigeria-changed-my-career-ademola-lookman-credits-super-eagles-for-career-growth.html\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a>Adefolahan Guerreiro<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer Super Eagles and Atalanta forward, Ademola Olajade Lookman, has revealed his decision to don the green and white colours of Nigeria has yielded positive fruit in his international career, Soccernet.ng reports. The 27-year-old was born in England, and represented the Three Lions youth team several times, and even won the FIFA U-20 World Cup [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":811448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27096,899,2005],"tags":[15956,7247],"class_list":{"0":"post-811447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"category-playing","9":"category-soccer","10":"tag-nigeria","11":"tag-playing"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}