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Ademola Lookman scored against Barcelona when the two teams met at the Metropolitano in the Copa del Rey.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Soccer rarely hands up a fixture sequence quite like the one Atlético Madrid faces this week. Barcelona arrive at the Estadio Riyadh Air Metropolitano on Saturday in La Liga. Four days later, the two clubs meet again at Camp Nou in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, with the second leg back in Madrid on April 14. Three games, three weeks, one opponent.
These are the same two clubs who contested the Copa del Rey semi-final less than two months ago, a tie Atlético won 4-3 on aggregate, and now meet across three different competitions inside just two weeks.
Standing at the centre of it all is Ademola Lookman. “It’s a special game against another tough opponent,” Lookman said, speaking to a roundtable of journalists arranged by LALIGA. “We need to be ready for that and prepare in the right way,” he said of Barcelona. “The next game is at the weekend, and we take every match as it comes, game by game.”
That measured tone has become something of a trademark. Lookman does not do hyperbole in press settings. What he does instead, and what matters more, is produce on the biggest stages, against the most demanding opposition, at the moments when the tie is alive.
An arrival that has sparked Atlético’s season
Lookman only joined Atlético Madrid at the end of the winter transfer window on a permanent deal on a contract to 2030. In his first six games, he scored four goals and added two assists, becoming the first player in the squad to score in the Champions League, La Liga, and Copa del Rey inside that opening run.
Since his arrival, he has accumulated two La Liga goals in seven appearances, alongside two goals and two assists in three games in the Copa del Rey, booking Atleti a place in the final for the first time since 2013, and a goal and an assist in the Champions League.
The numbers are one thing. The manner of the contributions is another. In the Copa del Rey semi-final first leg against Barcelona, Lookman scored and assisted in a ruthless first-half display that left the reigning cup holders stunned. He finished a flowing move in the 33rd minute to make it 3-0, then turned provider, setting up Julián Álvarez for the fourth just before half-time. The third goal came from a Giuliano Simeone cross to Álvarez, who squared for an unmarked Lookman to fire into the bottom corner; the fourth was Lookman sliding a pass into the middle for Álvarez to finish from just inside the box.
It was, across 45 minutes, the best performance of his time at the club. It probably will not stay that way for long.
Diego Simeone’s impact on Lookman
The more interesting question about Lookman’s Atlético career is not what he has brought to the club, but what the club is bringing to him. He arrived as the 2024 African Footballer of the Year, the man who scored a hat-trick in the Europa League final against Xabi Alonso’s unbeaten Bayer Leverkusen side, a player at the peak of his powers. His new coach Diego Simeone does not regard that as a ceiling.
“He’s very intense and very demanding,” Lookman said of his coach, “which is always good to have a manager like this, because you want to push as much as you can every single day”.
The specific area of development Lookman identifies is the one Simeone is known for demanding from every player in his squad, regardless of position: the defensive side of the game.
“Learning that side of the game is something I’ve always been open to and wanting to improve,” Lookman said, “because that obviously gives me a new capacity as an attacking player and it’s jumped into my game. That part of the game I'm definitely working on and working to improve, because it builds me up overall as a player.”
That is not abstract. In the second leg against Tottenham in London, Lookman spent much of the game tracking back inside Simeone’s 4-4-2, still managing one assist, 88% pass accuracy across 37 touches, and three defensive contributions. He was, in other words, both an attacking threat on the counter and a disciplined defensive unit. The balance is not one that came naturally to the player who spent his early career at Everton and Fulham. It is something being built at Atlético.
“I’m 28 now,” Lookman said when asked about his development across a decade in professional soccer. “The experiences I’ve learned, the lessons, the people who’ve helped me along the way have obviously shaped me to be who I am, being disciplined in a way where you let your work speak for itself, the work that goes unseen, you keep doing that, because one day it will pay off”.
A trilogy against Barcelona
Next: Barcelona. The Copa del Rey semi-final gave both clubs detailed intelligence on the other, and that context now applies to three more fixtures instead of one. The 4-0 at the Metropolitano showed what Atlético is capable of on a fast surface, with space to counter and the crowd generating the kind of atmosphere that filled 69,200 seats that February night. The 3-0 second leg at Camp Nou showed what Barcelona do when they need to attack, and also that Atlético are capable of holding a lead even when everything around them is chaos.
Lookman played across both legs. He was withdrawn before the hour at the Camp Nou when the tie was still mathematically alive, Simeone protecting a lead that ultimately held. He was phlegmatic about the split result.
“We won 4-0 at home and the result of the away match was that, and we’re through to the final, so there’s a lot to take away from both games, home and away,” he reflected. “We’ve obviously learned from that and we’re still learning from that. Every occasion you can expect something unexpected, that’s the game.”
He is right, and the unpredictability works both ways. Simeone himself acknowledged after the Tottenham tie that Barcelona are the best attacking team in Europe, saying, “Barcelona is better than us, but it will push us to compete, hopefully, in the best way possible”. That’s not pessimism or defeatism, rather Simeone framing the task in the only terms he ever uses: as something to be ground out, organized around, and won despite the odds.
Lookman’s role in that is not subtle. He is the player most likely to turn a half-chance on the counter into a goal. His pace, movement, and willingness to drive at defenders in transition are the precise attributes that hurt Barcelona’s high defensive line in February. He adapted to Simeone’s tactical demands from his very first weeks at the club , pressing aggressively, thriving on the counter, which meant the Barcelona match arrived at the ideal moment in his Atlético development.
Handling three meetings across two competitions
The La Liga fixture on Saturday, April 4th, complicates matters. It mayy come first chronologically, but it’s the one the Colchoneros are least concerned by. Atlético have effectively conceded the title race, with nine league games remaining and a significant gap to the top two.
Simeone is managing minor injuries to sevral key players, including midfielders Pablo Barrios and Johnny Cardoso, and defender Marc Pubill ahead of the European fixture, and the Champions League quarter-final and Copa del Rey final on April 18 against Real Sociedad are the clear priorities.
That means Saturday’s game against Barcelona in La Liga could see rotation, tactical caution, or both. What it will not see is disinterest. Atlético, particularly under Simeone, do not do disinterest. The fixture is still a Metropolitano derby-equivalent in terms of atmosphere and intensity, and Lookman knows that preparation for a run of games like this leaves no room for shortcuts.
“Recovery, eating right, sleeping right,” he said when asked how he manages the demands of stacking high-pressure fixtures. “Doing everything in your power possible to be at your best. Control what you control. Control your controllables and be at your best.”
Three matches against the same opponent across three competitions inside 13 days. A Copa del Rey final against Real Sociedad waiting on the other side. A Champions League semi-final against either Arsenal or Sporting CP possible beyond that, but only for the victor of this Champions League encounter.
Lookman arrived at Atlético two months ago. He has already played elite competition, scoring against both Real Madrid and Barcelona, since his arrival and has come out on the right side of a knock-out tie against the Catalans.
“It’s a special game,” he said, about facing Barcelona in the Champions League. Whether the word special covers what is coming, three times over, probably depends on how the next two weeks end.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
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