Eighteen-year-old Flying Eagles winger Bidemi Amole is on the verge of joining Atalanta from Real Sapphire Academy, with respected Italian outlet TMW reporting the deal could be finalised within hours. Bergamo is returning to Nigeria to sign its next left winger.
One Lookman left Bergamo. Now, Atalanta wants another one from Nigeria. Bidemi Olalekan Amole, the 18-year-old left winger from Lagos-based Real Sapphire FC and a regular in the Nigeria U20 setup, is closing in on a move to Serie A side Atalanta, according to an exclusive report from FootballInNigeria.com.ng, with Italian transfer authority TMW confirming the Bergamo club is in advanced talks and expects the deal done imminently.
Bidemi, born in Ibadan on November 10, 2007, will join Atalanta’s youth academy structure first. But the club’s plan is clear: monitor his development closely and consider promotion to the senior squad as early as the 2026/27 pre-season. It’s the same deliberate, long-term pipeline approach Atalanta used to develop the player Bidemi is already being compared to, Ademola Lookman, who left Bergamo for Atletico Madrid in a deal worth up to €40 million just last month.
Player Profile
Date of birth: 10 November 2007 (18)
Place of birth: Ibadan, Nigeria
Position: Left Winger
Current club: Real Sapphire FC, Lagos
Nigeria U20 caps: 7 | Goals: 1
Destination: Atalanta (youth academy)
Why Atalanta Went Back to Nigeria
Losing Lookman was always going to leave a gap at Atalanta. Not just in goals, the Nigerian scored 55 times and added 27 assists across all competitions for the Bergamo club, including the most famous hat-trick in Atalanta history, a three-goal demolition of Bayer Leverkusen in the 2024 Europa League final. It was a gap in identity, too. Lookman became the face of Atalanta’s attack. Finding a replacement from the same football culture, someone with that same explosive left-side quality, makes absolute sense from Bergamo’s perspective.
Scouts from multiple clubs, not just Atalanta, had been watching Bidemi for well over a year. He was first called into the Nigeria U20 setup at just 16, a rare distinction that signals genuine precocity. He represented the Flying Eagles at the 2025 U20 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, making seven appearances in total under coach Aliyu Zubairu, contributing one goal. His performances at that tournament, including a goal and assist in the warm-up match against the host nation, confirmed what scouts had been saying privately since he starred for Sporting Lagos at the 2024 Gothia Cup in Sweden.
At the Gothia Cup, playing for Sporting Lagos as debutants in the competition, Bidemi caught the eye of European scouts with his dribbling ability, unpredictability, and directness. Scouts described him as a player in the mould of Sadio Mane, but with the ability to drift inside and create, a natural left winger who doesn’t need the ball played to him in perfect conditions to make things happen.
The Lookman Blueprint Atalanta Wants to Repeat
What makes this signing so significant is the template it follows. Lookman joined Atalanta in August 2022 from RB Leipzig for €15 million, a player with obvious talent but an inconsistent career track record across England and Germany. Under then-coach Gian Piero Gasperini, Lookman transformed into one of Europe’s most lethal wingers. He scored on debut, registered 20 goals in his best season, won the Europa League with a personal hat-trick, received a Ballon d’Or nomination, and was named African Footballer of the Year. His exit fee to Atletico Madrid was fixed at €35 million, with up to €5 million in bonuses.
That is the Atalanta production line at work. They buy raw or undervalued talent, develop it systematically, and either utilise it or sell at massive profit. They’ve done it with Lookman, with Rasmus Hojlund, with El Bilal Toure. Now they’re reaching into the Nigerian academy system even earlier, signing an 18-year-old directly from Real Sapphire rather than waiting for another club to develop the player first.
For Nigerian football, this matters enormously. It confirms that European clubs at the highest level are no longer waiting for Nigeria’s most promising talents to pass through intermediate clubs in Nigeria or lower European leagues before making their move. They’re coming directly to the source. Real Sapphire FC, based in Lagos, now joins a short but growing list of Nigerian academies, alongside Remo Stars’ feeder structure, Kwara United’s development arm, and the old Julius Berger Academy, that can point to producing players bound for Europe’s elite.
Competition Was Fierce, Atalanta Won the Race
Atalanta didn’t sign Bidemi without a fight. TMW reports the club saw off competition from multiple other European sides who had been monitoring the teenager. The details of who those rivals were haven’t been confirmed publicly, but given the level of attention Bidemi attracted at the 2025 U20 AFCON and at Gothia, interest from clubs in France’s Ligue 1 and the Belgian Pro League would not be surprising.
In the end, Atalanta’s track record with Nigerian talent, their reputation as a development club, and the very visible success story of Lookman almost certainly influenced the decision. When a club can point to a player from your country who came through their system and ended up at Atletico Madrid for €40 million, it’s a compelling pitch.
Analysis: What This Move Means for Nigerian Football
Bidemi’s Atalanta move is about more than one teenager getting a big opportunity. It signals a structural shift in how top European clubs are approaching Nigerian youth talent. Rather than waiting for the NFF’s Under-17 or Under-20 setup to package players for European consumption, clubs like Atalanta are actively scouting Nigeria’s domestic academy circuit, building relationships with clubs like Real Sapphire, and making moves before rivals can.
That’s good news for Nigeria’s football ecosystem, but it comes with a warning. Every Bidemi Amole who signs for Atalanta at 18 is a player who won’t feature in the NPFL or NNL for the next decade. Nigeria’s domestic league loses its most exciting young talents at ever-younger ages. The financial returns from transfer fees and potential sell-on clauses theoretically benefit Nigerian clubs. But Real Sapphire’s long-term gain from this deal, if Bidemi fulfils his potential, depends entirely on contract structures negotiated right now.
For the Super Eagles, the picture is more straightforwardly positive. A player developing at Atalanta under elite coaches, with access to Serie A competition from pre-season, is more likely to become a senior international than a teenager grinding through Nigeria’s league system for four more years. If Bidemi does what Lookman did in Bergamo, the Super Eagles gain a ready-made winger just as the next generation of Lookman, Chukwueze, and Eze begins to age out.
The Ibadan Boy With the Lookman Label
The “new Lookman” tag is both a gift and a burden for any 18-year-old to carry. Lookman’s Atalanta career was one of the great individual stories in Nigerian football history. Bidemi has seven U20 caps and a Gothia Cup winner’s medal. The comparison is premature by any objective measure.
But the fact that scouts who watched Lookman develop are reaching for the comparison organically tells you something real about Bidemi’s profile. The 178cm left winger is described by those inside the Flying Eagles camp as unpredictable, full of tricks, and genuinely dangerous in one-on-one situations. His inconsistency, flagged by Flying Eagles staff during the Togo qualifying campaign, is the work-in-progress that Italian coaching will now try to address.
Atalanta will be patient. They don’t expect an 18-year-old straight from Nigerian football to walk into Serie A. They’ll put Bidemi through their academy process methodically, assessing whether his pre-season numbers merit a step up. For Bidemi, the work starts now.
Nigeria’s talent pipeline to Europe continues to flow. As fans track Bidemi’s progression through Atalanta’s academy and watch the broader movement of Nigerian players across European football, the Bet9ja welcome offer gives Nigerian football supporters a way to follow the action on the continent with an enhanced opening stake on European matches.
One thing is not in doubt. Atalanta went looking for a Nigerian left winger after Lookman left, and they found one. The Bergamo pipeline from Lagos is open again.
📌 Did You Know?
- Ademola Lookman’s 55 goals for Atalanta across all competitions make him the club’s highest-scoring Nigerian player in history, and his Europa League final hat-trick against Bayer Leverkusen in 2024 was the first by any player in a one-legged men’s European final since Pierino Prati in 1969.
- Bidemi Amole was first called into the Nigeria U20 setup at just 16 years old, making him one of the youngest players to represent the Flying Eagles in recent memory and catching European scouts’ attention a full two years before his Atalanta deal.
- Real Sapphire FC, Bidemi’s academy in Lagos, also produced players who featured for Sporting Lagos at the 2024 Gothia Cup in Sweden, where the Nigerian debutants won the tournament and announced themselves on the global youth football stage.
- Atalanta have now signed three players directly connected to Nigerian football in recent years: Lookman (from RB Leipzig in 2022), Isak Hien (who played alongside Nigerians at Verona), and now Bidemi Amole directly from a Nigerian academy in 2026.
- Lookman’s €35 million Atletico Madrid transfer makes him Nigeria’s second most expensive export ever, behind only Victor Osimhen, whose fees at Napoli (€70m+) and Galatasaray remain the benchmark for African players.
- The 2024 Gothia Cup in Sweden, where Bidemi’s Sporting Lagos won as debutants, is one of the world’s largest youth football tournaments, drawing over 1,600 teams from more than 80 countries annually. Winning it as a Nigerian first-timer drew significant European attention to the squad.
- Atalanta’s current head coach, Raffaele Palladino, publicly praised Lookman after his departure to Atletico, calling his contribution to the club’s Europa League win “historic.” Palladino now faces the task of building a new attack without Lookman, with Bidemi’s long-term development part of that rebuilding plan.
