Lookman vows to surpass Osimhen in target race

Lookman, Serie A’s second-highest scorer this season with 11 goals in 18 appearances, making him the second most prolific scorer in the competition, behind Nigerian team-mate Victor Osimhen, who scored 13 for league leaders Napoli.

When asked about his chances of finishing ahead of Osimhen, the 25-year-old told The Athletic: “No, at least not if he’s above you,” laughs Lookman.

“I will catch him (Osimhen). I couldn’t, I will.

The Nigeria international also revealed that Leicester City made no secret of wanting to sign him permanently, but the club’s finances made it difficult.

They had to sell before they could buy and got no offers for players. In the end, Lookman had to decide his own future.

“I had a few offers in England and thought: what do I really need next season?” he continued.

“I sat down with my family and when Atalanta came in we came to the conclusion that this was another stage in the journey that we had to go through because we felt it was important that another layer was added to me. “

His first talks with the Italian club convinced him it was the right move.

“Everything revolved around attacking football,” he added.

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“Some of their results from last season, they would win 6-5 or 5-4. That in itself told me that it is attacking football. That’s what you want to play football for. So that was a plus. And also the manager (Gian Piero

Gasperini), he is an intelligent individual. What he’s done at the club is amazing, taking the team to the Champions League and exactly the way he envisions football, I’ve never seen that before.”

Gasperini has been at the club since 2016 – an impressive period by Serie A standards. Lookman is full of praise for the 64-year-old who he says has given him the space to express himself on the pitch. “But that’s still within the structure of the team,” he warns. “Because everything is factored into how the team plays and how you can be a factor for the team.

“That was one of the first conversations I had with him. He told me how to impose my qualities on the team to help them get better. And if he said it to me that way – that’s a way that has never been said to me before. Maybe, but I didn’t really understand it at the time. But now it’s like, ‘I understand what you’re saying’”

Gasperini, or “Mister” as Lookman calls him, is the toughest manager he’s ever had.

“A very hard man. It was a new way of learning for me. I started thinking about the game differently. I just knew what he expected of me.”

“The best players know what to do. And it’s not because they have a strict manager or because they don’t have a strict manager, but they know what to do and they are focused on execution. That’s a key word: execution. It’s a decisive word, and that decisiveness is something I’m keying in and learning.”

“Execute” is a word that comes up at different times during our time together. Like ‘mentality’. When asked why he feels things are coming together in such a positive way for him on the pitch in Italy, Lookman first praises the club for giving him “the platform, the minutes”, but he also talks about feeling like everything – on and off off the field – finally feels right. “Since I first came into professional football, it has been up and down. Now, for the first time in my career, everything I do comes together. Whether that’s work with no training or whatever I have planned for myself, it all falls together and it all works for me.