As a result of the 27-year-old player’s missed opportunity during Atalanta’s 3-1 loss to Club Brugge on Tuesday night, Gian Piero Gasperini, the manager of the club, made the outrageous claim.
After suffering a defeat in Belgium for the previous week, the Serie A team entered the second leg of their knockout play-off trailing by a score of 2-1.
Furthermore, things got off to a terrible start in Bergamo, as the away team scored three goals in the first half without receiving any responses from the home team.
Lookman was the one who provided the impetus for the home team’s attempt to stage a comeback. He scored his 15th goal of the season by poking the ball into the back of the net just 34 seconds after the break.
It was because of his strike that he made history in the Champions League by scoring the goal that was scored by a substitute at the earliest possible point in the second half.
On the other hand, Lookman, who was brimming with self-assurance, took the initiative in the 61st minute in an effort to reduce Brugge’s overall lead to 5-3.
However, former Liverpool custodian Simon Mignolet made the correct decision to prevent Lookman from converting his penalty kick, which was positioned in the bottom right corner of the goal.
It was the 36-year-old’s sixteenth penalty save over the course of his lengthy career, and it was only Lookman’s second miss from 12 yards after his infamous Panenka attempt for Fulham against West Ham in 2020.
In the second leg of the competition, Atalanta was unable to score another goal, and Brugge became the first Belgian team to directly eliminate an Italian team from the competition since Anderlecht eliminated Juventus in 1982.
When Gasperini was asked about his feelings regarding Lookman’s decision to take the penalty, he did not hold back his anger but expressed it after the match.
Despite the fact that the Nigerian international has scored four of his previous four penalty kicks since joining the club in 2022, nothing has changed.
“Lookman wasn’t supposed to take the penalty,” declared Gasperini, venting his frustration.
When it comes to taking penalties, he is among the worst I’ve ever seen.
Despite the fact that he has a very low percentage even in training, he kicks them extremely hard.
After scoring a goal, he expressed his desire to take the penalty shot.
It was despite the fact that Mateo Retegui and Charles De Ketele were both available to take the ball that he took it. I was not pleased with what Lookman had done.
The focus of Atalanta’s attention will now shift back to their pursuit of the Serie A championship, as the club currently occupies the third spot in the standings, five points behind Napoli, who are the leaders.
