Celtic in battle to sign an experienced star from Atalanta

During his first stint as manager, Brendan Rodgers has disclosed how he nearly persuaded Ademola Lookman of Atalanta to join Celtic Park.

Ten years ago, when he was just a youngster making headlines with Charlton Athletic in England, Rodgers noticed the Nigerian winger.

In 2017, Lookman signed a £11 million contract with Everton after Celtic failed to pay the League One team’s asking price. After that, he made a temporary move to RB Leipzig before settling on a permanent one.

Lookman joined Serie A in the summer of 2022, and his hat-trick against Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League final the previous year cemented his place in Atalanta legends.

Now, Rodgers and Lookman will meet once more tonight when Celtic plays Atalanta in the Champions League in Bergamo, seeking to silence the explosive forward.

“How close was he to signing?” Rodgers asked when asked how close he was to bringing the 27-year-old to Celtic Park. Close in that he was genuinely thrilled about Celtic’s proposal. We were trying to persuade him to come when I met him in a London hotel. Regretfully, we were unable to reach the standards Charlton had set for him.

However, the club took every action they could at the time. He aspired to join a major club, thus he was at Charlton at the time. He was free of the expectations and all the reasons a player would want to join Celtic.

It’s obvious that Charlton wanted to obtain him as much as they could. We conversed with him, from

But in the end, it was undoubtedly a monetary amount. I believe he moved to Everton from perhaps £11 million or such. It simply drifted out of sight. It was difficult financially to pay the price. But salaries and all the other things the club could do. At that moment, the athlete was alert. That was the closest it came.

We have maintained communication, and he is an excellent player and a wonderful man. At the time, we had the opportunity to sign him at Leicester. Unfortunately, though, we were unable to sign any players that summer. He was subsequently brought here to Atalanta by Lee Congestion, the former Celtic recruitment chief who is currently in Italy. He is now a legend at the club.

He went on to say, “He’s a young player who is absolutely brilliant.” while I was at Leicester, we wanted to bring in another winger, so we kept in touch and asked him if he was available while he was at Red Bull.

He was there and scored some incredible goals for me that season, and he came in and was fantastic. A fantastic individual goal against Liverpool comes to mind.

“As a young man who left London and didn’t hesitate to travel, I’m really proud of him and his profession. traveling to Germany at the time and, of course, arriving in Everton, in the northwest of England.

You could see his entire personality when he visited Leicester. He lives a morally upright life. Everything is designed to help him reach his full potential. The goals he scored in that Europa League final were not coincidental, as I witnessed.

Every day of his life, he put that into practice wherever he could. Long after everyone else had gone inside, he would be outside practicing his shooting skills with a bag of balls. working on both his left and right feet.

He is really well-balanced. His right foot can shoot up just as easily as his left. He is a young professional who is very amazing. It was so incredible to watch him score the hat-trick in the championship game last year.