Ademola Lookman produced one of the greatest individual performances in a UEFA Europa League Final, nay European final, of all time. The Nigerian scored a sublime hat-trick against the mighty and invincible Bayer Leverkusen to single handedly guide Atalanta to the title.
An amazing achievement for Gian Piero Gasperini, the coach of one of the most exciting teams in Italy, this is the first ever European trophy triumph for the club from Bergamo in their history.
However as impressive the performance was, same cannot be said about the post game tributes and graphics which didn’t really go down well with the fans.
Apparently, Sky Sports released a graphic congratulating Atalanta for their historic triumph after the game. However, their congratulations were received with groans after they missed out on including the hero and the match winner in their tribute.
Ademola Lookman did not score all 3 goals to not get included in the graphics. SkySport is never beating the allegations. https://t.co/pzVnivf9GO
The fact that Lookman brought home the title with a sizzling display makes Sky Sports look really bad for their latest blunder.
The poster that dropped on their social media congratulating Atalanta for the title seems so basic and makes it looks like they made it as a formality.
As undercooked and half-baked as it looks, the popular English sports broadcasting channel included Dutch midfielder Teun Koopmeiners and Italian striker Gianluca Scamacca as the poster boys with the trophy with no sniff of Ademola Lookman in sight.
The bland graphics have also been subject of allegations of racism and bias with fans claiming that Sky Sports didn’t include Lookman because of skin color and also as he chose to play for Nigeria even though he was of British origin.
Nigerians are blasting Sky Sports for excluding Ademola Lookman in Europa League graphics pic.twitter.com/JAgjAAuITs
Due to these reasons, Sky Sports’ graphic has attracted a lot of negativity, allegations and sparked an outrage among the fans.
With the fans online bearing down their necks, Sky released a post match interview of Ademola Lookman talking about his performance and the magical night it had been for his club Atalanta the first thing next day to hose down some of the fires.
However, it hasn’t proved to be enough as onlookers and journalists from Nigeria are enraged over Lookman’s omission from the front page of the posts, symbolic of diminishing his contribution to the victory in the Europa League Final.
It also seems like this is not the first time Sky Sports is guilty of omitting leading men from their congratulatory posts, more so strangely, if they have colored skin. Victor Osimhen is said to have experienced a similar situation when he powered them to an astonishing Serie A league title last season.
While a case could be made about most of these big publications are often ready with their posts beforehand in scenarios like that of a Final, it also happens most of the times that they are able incorporate changes to it in times of a sensational individual performance.
Regardless, be it a blunder or scheduled posting by Sky Sports, their post omitting the history maker and match winner from their graphic certainly isn’t a good look for a popular publication of their stature.
