{"id":23927,"date":"2024-12-17T16:17:03","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T16:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/ademola-lookman-how-nigeria-star-became-african-player-of-the-year\/"},"modified":"2024-12-17T16:17:04","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T16:17:04","slug":"ademola-lookman-how-nigeria-star-became-african-player-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/ademola-lookman-how-nigeria-star-became-african-player-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Ademola Lookman: How Nigeria star became African player of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Now a guaranteed starter for both club and country, he played a pivotal role in Nigeria’s run to the final of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations at the start of this year.<\/p>\n

Lookman scored both goals in the last-16 victory over Cameroon and then the winner against Angola in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

Nigeria finished as runners-up<\/a> but the forward could console himself with a place in the team of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Super Eagles team-mate Alex Iwobi says Lookman is a “great talent” – and one who deserves his African player of the year award.<\/p>\n

“The rise that we’ve seen, we’re not surprised,” Iwobi told Newsday on the BBC World Service.<\/p>\n

“He’s so effective. [To] see what he’s doing motivates everyone in the team.<\/p>\n

“If my brother is working hard, we have to work as hard as him or even harder.”<\/p>\n

Lookman was the only African on this year’s Ballon d’Or list, ultimately finishing 14th in the race to be named the world’s best player.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the awards, BBC Sport Africa asked him to reflect on his progress over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n

“It’s been defining in terms of steps taken, but this is just the start of hopefully something very special,” he replied.<\/p>\n

With Atalanta leading Serie A and chasing their first top-flight title, Lookman’s powers continue to grow.<\/p>\n

For Africa’s best player, the pain of his early days in the Premier League certainly appears to be long forgotten.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now a guaranteed starter for both club and country, he played a pivotal role in Nigeria’s run to the final of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations at the start of this year. Lookman scored both goals in the last-16 victory over Cameroon and then the winner against Angola in the quarter-finals. Nigeria finished as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23929,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23927\/revisions\/23929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}