Akor Adams’ 72nd-minute winner against Villarreal at the Estadio de la Cerámica did more than rescue three points for Sevilla from two goals down — it placed the Super Eagles striker inside one of the most exclusive clubs in the history of Nigerian football in Spain.
Villarreal 2-3 Sevilla | LaLiga Matchday 36 | Estadio de la Cerámica
Moreno 13′ (Villarreal) | Mikautadze 20′ (Villarreal) | Oso 36′ (Sevilla) | Salas 45+2′ (Sevilla) | Adams 72′ (Sevilla)
Adams’ 10th LaLiga goal of the season — first Nigerian to reach double figures since Ikechukwu Uche in 2013-14
Sevilla: Three wins from three, four points clear of relegation, three points off European spot
The last Nigerian to score ten league goals in a single LaLiga campaign was Ikechukwu Uche, playing for Villarreal in the 2013-14 season. He finished that year on 14, one of the finest individual campaigns by a Nigerian in the history of Spanish top-flight football. It took twelve years for another Super Eagles player to reach the same milestone, and when Adams got there on Wednesday evening, he did it at the same ground where Uche used to play, driving a fierce left-footed effort past the Villarreal goalkeeper in the 72nd minute to complete one of the results of the LaLiga season.
Adams’ tenth league goal of the 2025-26 campaign adds his name to a list of Nigerians in Spanish football history that carries genuine weight. Finidi George, who played for Real Betis across multiple seasons during his European career, is on that list. Christopher Ohenhen, the all-time leading Nigerian scorer in LaLiga with 48 goals for SD Compostela during the 1990s, heads it. And now Adams, in his first full season in Spain after joining Sevilla permanently from Montpellier in January 2025, sits alongside those names after ending a 12-year gap in the record.
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Nigerians With 10+ LaLiga Goals In A Single Season
| Player | Club | Season | LaLiga Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christopher Ohenhen | SD Compostela | 1996-97 | 21 |
| Ikechukwu Uche | Villarreal | 2013-14 | 14 |
| Finidi George | Real Betis | 1997-98 | 12 |
| Ikechukwu Uche | Xerez | 2009-10 | 11 |
| Akor Adams | Sevilla | 2025-26 | 10 (ongoing) |
The Match That Sealed The Record
Sevilla had no business being in a winning position at the Estadio de la Cerámica when the halftime whistle blew. Gerard Moreno had given Villarreal the lead after 13 minutes, and Georgian striker Georges Mikautadze doubled the advantage in the 20th minute to leave Sevilla facing a defeat that would have dragged them back toward the relegation zone. The response, when it came, was rapid and collective. Oso pulled one back in the 36th minute, and Kike Salas headed the equaliser in stoppage time before the break, a remarkable recovery that changed the entire psychological character of the match.
The second half belonged to Sevilla, with Villarreal visibly affected by having squandered a two-goal lead before the interval. Adams arrived in the 72nd minute with the composure of a player whose confidence is at its seasonal peak, taking possession just inside the box and driving a firm left-footed finish beyond the goalkeeper. The goal prompted immediate celebration from the travelling support and confirmed Sevilla’s third consecutive league victory, a run that has transformed the shape of their season entirely.
The result came days after Adams had scored a 91st-minute winner against Espanyol in the previous round, meaning he has now scored in back-to-back LaLiga matches, both of them decisive. In a team fighting relegation, the psychological value of a striker producing this kind of form at this specific moment of the campaign cannot be measured in statistics alone. Readers following Sevilla’s final two fixtures can check the Bet9ja YOHAIG new user code for the latest registration offer ahead of the remaining rounds of LaLiga.
What The Twelve-Year Gap Tells Us
The twelve-year interval between Uche’s 2013-14 campaign and Adams’ current achievement reflects something important about the difficulty of the task Adams has completed. Nigerian footballers have been consistently active in LaLiga across those twelve seasons, with Kalu Uche, Umar Sadiq, Samuel Chukwueze, and others all contributing goals in Spanish top-flight football. None of them reached ten league goals in a single campaign. That is not a reflection of their quality; it is a reflection of how high the threshold actually is.
Adams has cleared it with two matches still to play, which means his final tally could rise further before the season closes. He has also added three assists to his ten league goals, giving him a total contribution of 13 from open play, a figure that comfortably places him among the more productive forwards in the lower half of the LaLiga table this season. Sevilla’s own position confirms the importance of that production. They have moved four points clear of the relegation zone with two games remaining, a margin that would have been inconceivable six weeks ago.
Ikechukwu Uche’s Record In Context
The Nigerian that Adams has joined at the ten-goal threshold, Ikechukwu Uche, deserves proper recognition for what he built in Spain. The former Villarreal, Xerez and Getafe forward was one of the most technically complete Nigerian forwards of his generation in European football, combining pace, finishing quality and tactical intelligence in a way that made him genuinely difficult to defend against in LaLiga’s more open matches. His 14-goal campaign in 2013-14 came in a Villarreal side that was rebuilding after relegation and promotion, and his contribution was central to the club’s consolidation in the top flight during that period. Adams reaching ten goals this season does not diminish Uche’s achievement; it salutes it by finally matching the level twelve years on.
The broader list of Nigerians who have reached double figures in LaLiga is remarkably short given how many Super Eagles players have competed in the division. Christopher Ohenhen’s 21-goal season for Compostela in 1996-97 remains the single greatest goalscoring campaign by a Nigerian in LaLiga history and one of the most underappreciated stories in the history of African football in Europe. Finidi George’s 12 goals for Betis in 1997-98 came from a winger rather than a striker, making it an even more impressive individual achievement in the context of the position. Adams has now written himself into this conversation, and two matches remain to extend his contribution further.
The European Possibility That Has Emerged
The Villarreal win did more than secure points in a relegation fight. Sevilla’s three consecutive victories have moved them to within three points of Getafe in seventh place, the last UEFA Europa Conference League qualification spot. With two rounds of matches remaining, a Europa ticket is not beyond them, and Adams’ goals across this run would be the most direct cause of any European football Sevilla play next season.
As reported by FootballInNigeria.com.ng, Adams has now scored in consecutive LaLiga matches, contributed in both survival and potential European qualification scenarios, and crossed a threshold that no Nigerian has cleared in over a decade. The 26-year-old from Warri, Delta State, arrived in Spain as a relatively low-profile signing from Montpellier and has turned that underestimation into one of the Nigerian football stories of the 2025-26 European season. Fans following his final two appearances of the campaign can also use the Bet9ja statistics page to track all live LaLiga data through to the final weekend.
📌 Did You Know?
- Christopher Ohenhen’s 21-goal LaLiga season for SD Compostela in 1996-97 remains the single greatest scoring campaign by a Nigerian in the history of Spanish top-flight football. Compostela were a Galician club who spent several seasons in LaLiga during the 1990s before eventually dropping out of the top flight, and Ohenhen was their standout performer during their most competitive period.
- Ikechukwu Uche scored at least 10 LaLiga goals in two separate seasons: 14 for Villarreal in 2013-14 and 11 for Xerez in 2009-10, making him the only Nigerian to reach double figures in LaLiga on multiple occasions before Adams’ achievement in 2025-26. His career total of 43 LaLiga goals is second only to Ohenhen’s 48 in the all-time Nigerian scorer list in the division.
- Akor Adams was born on January 29, 2000, in Delta State, Nigeria, and began his professional career in Norway before moving to Montpellier in France. His journey to LaLiga via Scandinavia and Ligue 1 is the kind of non-traditional pathway that is increasingly common among the best Nigerian talent finding routes to European football’s top leagues.
- Finidi George, whose 12-goal season for Real Betis in 1997-98 features in the exclusive list of Nigerians with 10+ LaLiga goals, also played for Ajax during the peak of his career, winning the UEFA Champions League in 1995. He is now the head coach of Rivers United, who are competing for the NPFL title on May 24, completing a remarkable full-circle story in Nigerian football.
- Villarreal’s Estadio de la Cerámica, where Adams scored his historic 10th LaLiga goal, was also the ground where Ikechukwu Uche played his home matches during his 14-goal season in 2013-14. The coincidence of the record being broken at the very stadium of the previous holder adds a poetic dimension to Adams’ achievement.
- Sevilla’s three-match winning run heading into the final two games of the 2025-26 season follows a period in which the club had been as low as 18th in the LaLiga table as recently as April. The turnaround, powered significantly by Adams’ goals, represents one of the more dramatic recoveries by a major Spanish club in a single season’s closing stretch.
- Georges Mikautadze, who scored Villarreal’s second goal in the 20th minute during the Sevilla match, is a Georgian international who has previously been linked with moves to several Premier League clubs. His performance underlined why Villarreal, despite their European ambitions, remain a club built on recruiting technically accomplished players from outside Spain’s traditional scouting network.
