Tolu Arokodare: Striker with goals in Latvia, Belgium, France and England

From the summer of 2021, Tolu continued his career in France. This time, Amiens SC secured the striker on loan from the Latvian club. During a season and a half with the French side, he accumulated 3,829 minutes across all competitions. In Ligue 2, he scored fourteen goals in 55 matches. Nine of those goals came with his right foot, three with his left and two with his head. In the Coupe de France, Tolu found the net seven times in eight appearances. After 63 matches for Amiens SC, he moved to KRC Genk at the beginning of 2023. The Belgian club made his transfer permanent after initially bringing him in from France.

KRC Genk
Despite an impressive debut, scoring the winner away at KAA Gent, he featured in only eleven matches during his first six months at the club. An injury was among the factors that kept him sidelined. In the 2023/24 season, Tolu made no fewer than 52 appearances for Genk. He scored fifteen goals, including two in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers against Servette FC, both home and away. The following campaign proved to be his finest season at the Belgian club.

Thirty league matches, seventeen goals and six assists. After thirty rounds of fixtures, KRC Genk entered the Belgian play-offs as league leaders. Tolu added another four goals during those play-offs, although the title ultimately slipped away. His tally of 21 goals earned him a share of first place in the scoring charts, with Kasper Dolberg third on eighteen goals. Furthermore, among all players in the Belgian top flight that season, Tolu recorded the highest number of shots, touches in the penalty area and headed attempts on target. Looking at his overall statistics for Genk, he registered 281 shots, with 91.5 per cent coming from inside the penalty area. Twenty goals were scored with his right foot, eight with his left and seven with his head.

Golden Shoe
Winning several individual honours, including the Belgian Golden Shoe, earned him a move to the Premier League. Wolverhampton Wanderers signed him last summer. His Premier League debut away to Newcastle United did not go as planned, ending in a 1-0 defeat. However, things went much better ten days later in the EFL Cup. Coming on in the 68th minute at home against Everton, Tolu scored the decisive second goal nineteen minutes later. In total, he made 38 appearances for Wolves last season.

Since leaving Latvia, Tolu has scored 53 league goals. All 53 were scored from inside the penalty area. Standing at almost two metres tall, he has also netted eleven goals with his head. In Amsterdam, he will wear the number 99 shirt.

Tolu becomes the eighth Nigerian player in Ajax's history. Finidi George and Nwankwo Kanu were the first, joining the club in 1993. Calvin Bassey was the most recent Nigerian player to make the move to the white-red-and-white colours of Ajax.