Yahoo News Brendan Rodgers reveals 'sad part' of £14m Leicester City transfer
Brendan Rodgers has lauded the professionalism of Ademola Lookman after the former Leicester City loan striker plundered a hat-trick in Atalanta’s Europa League triumph over Bayer Leverkusen.
The 26-year-old scored all three of his side’s goals to administer a first defeat of the season upon Xabi Alonso’s Bundesliga champions and to thrust himself back into the headlines that have eluded him since he left the Premier League in 2022.
Celtic manager Rodgers had Lookman in his City squad in the 2021/22 season when, as an Everton player, he featured in 26 Premier League games and was part of the team which reached the Europa Conference League semi-finals. Rodgers has fond memories of the attacker’s time at the King Power Stadium and regrets that he wasn’t able to make it permanent.
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Speaking to talkSPORT he said: “When I was at Leicester and he was out at Red Bull, we had the chance to take him on loan, so I took him in and he was absolutely brilliant.
“What a professional he is, how he looks after himself, the extra work he does in training. Those goals that he scored, he practises those after training. He'd always do extra finishing. His professionalism was unbelievable and the only sad part for us was at the end of that season, we had a clause where we could have bought him for £14 million.
“But if you think back to that summer we couldn't sign any players and then one of my guys that I worked closely with here at Celtic and at Leicester was a guy called Lee Congerton and Lee was by then the general manager of Atalanta. When he knew that we weren't able to take him, he took him then out to Atalanta and he's done absolutely brilliant there. So I'm so happy. The goals he scored, especially the second and third one.
“He scored some massive goals for me at Leicester he scored the winning goal in a game against Liverpool at home. It was a brilliant individual goal but I was so, so pleased for him because he's travelled the world to be the best player that he can be and I'm so happy his talents been able to flourish in such a big occasion.”
