Romelu Lukaku is finally getting the respect he deserves

On the evening of Roberto Martinez’s first match in charge of Belgium in 2016, Romelu Lukaku, the greatest goalscorer in the history of the Belgian national team, was placed on the bench.

On that occasion, Liverpool’s Divock Origi received the nod and Lukaku watched on from the dugout. In a documentary entitled Whistle to Whistle, which aired on Belgian television this week, Lukaku recalled: “When (Martinez) came here, the idea was ‘If you want to play, you have to prove yourself’. And during those first two camps, the training intensity was very high because everyone wanted to play. I did not play the first match and I really, really wanted to play. So in the days that followed, I did everything possible in training to show that I wanted to play. After that, I have never been out of the team since.”

Lukaku, who led the line impeccably for Belgium in their 3-0 victory over Russia on Saturday night, is a man fuelled by a will to win but also, it appears, a burning desire to disprove the many critics that have stalked his career. Lukaku is now 28 and an increasingly complete centre-forward. For Inter Milan last season, he powered their title charge, scoring 24 goals in Serie A and creating a further 11. In St Petersburg, his resilience was tested from the off, as Russian supporters appeared to whistle the Belgian players as they took the knee in protest against discrimination. Lukaku responded by scoring an instinctive goal inside 10 minutes but he stamped his personality all over Belgium’s dominant first-half display. A dash across the defence and a cool finish added gloss to the scoreline late on.

For Martinez, his striker will be an essential presence throughout the tournament but his role was particularly crucial in the absence of the injured Axel Witsel and Kevin De Bruyne, while Eden Hazard was only fit enough to enter into the final 20 minutes. On paper, this fixture, essentially an away game in Russia, had the makings of a complex assignment but the hosts were appalling in their press and Belgium simply played around them.

There had been major concerns before the game, as Belgian starters Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld, along with substitute Nacer Chadli, were long-term team-mates of Christian Eriksen at Tottenham Hotspur and Ajax, while Lukaku now plays with the Danish midfielder at Inter Milan. Lukaku dedicated his opener to Eriksen, who had suffered a shocking on-field collapse earlier in the day, moving in on the camera and saying “Chris, I love you”. “This shows how close the lads are,” Inter’s chief executive Beppe Marotta said of the celebration, explaining to RAI that Eriksen had messaged the club’s WhatsApp group late on Saturday to update them on his recovery.

“For me it’s was difficult today to play because my mind was with Christian,” Lukaku said. “I hope he is healthy and I dedicate this performance to him

“I cried a lot (when we saw what happened), because I was scared obviously, we lived strong moments together for a year and a half, I spent more time with him than with my family, so my thoughts are with him, his girlfriend, his two kids and his family”

"Chris, Chris… I love you!" ❤️

Romelu Lukaku gives #BEL an early lead over #RUS – before delivering a message of love for club team-mate Christian Eriksen 👏#ITVFootball | #Euro2020 pic.twitter.com/AJsMrQloyu

— ITV Football (@itvfootball) June 12, 2021

For Lukaku, more than a decade into his senior career, there is the sense, at long last, that he may be coming close to receiving the respect he merits from his coaches, team-mates and the public at large.

In the summer of 2019, Lukaku finally linked up with Antonio Conte at Inter Milan, after previously appearing set to join the manager at Chelsea two years earlier. However, Chelsea felt the demands of his then agent Mino Raiola were excessive, and that led to Manchester United stealing a march, as Jose Mourinho made repeated phone calls and Lukaku enjoyed a vacation in Los Angeles with United midfielder Paul Pogba.

Mourinho admitted on talkSPORT this week that Lukaku’s experience at Old Trafford “hurt” the forward and the Portuguese coach added: “I believed he got in Inter something that he needs. He needs to feel he’s the man and he’s the No 1 and loved. He was loved by the coach and supporters and make a big impact. The press is also supporting him. He’s got that love.”

He has been helped, too, by Conte’s intense fitness demands and a 3-5-2 system at Inter that partners Lukaku with Lautaro Martinez, creating more space for the Belgian to relish.

The smarterscout pizza chart below demonstrates Lukaku’s particularly high performance at Inter Milan last season in relation to “xG from shot creation”, which essentially is a metric used to portray the extent to which a player’s actions contribute to the team’s chances.

Lukaku’s 90 rating shows he is now a finisher and a provider, while he receives a high grade for “xG from ball progression” and “receptions in the opponent’s box”. These metrics inform us on how much a player picks up or receives the ball in dangerous areas, underlining that Lukaku is not only finding positions to unlock defences but also moving the ball to other players in good positions high up the field.

The striker does appear sharper than his period at Old Trafford, where criticism of his physique stung the striker. While on tour with United in Australia in 2019, he published data from a training session that showed he was recorded as the second-fastest player on the team, before posting a picture of a ripped body with the caption “not bad for a fat boy”. As ever with Lukaku, the criticism only drove him on.

Lukaku’s relationship with Martinez is extremely strong, after the pair worked together successfully at Everton for several years, and the Belgian coach in fact had first dispatched his chief scout at Wigan, Kevin Reeves, to watch Lukaku as a teenager emerging at Anderlecht.

Martinez has long spoken privately about Lukaku’s outstanding quality as a left-footed finisher but he also knows the story of Steve De Buyser, the youth coach at KFC Wintam, who sought to improve Lukaku’s right foot as a child by asking him to train without wearing a left boot.

Lukaku has experienced improvement under Martinez, whose focus initially was to improve the forward’s endurance after noticing that he had only played seven full 90-minute games in the Premier League during a previous loan at West Bromwich Albion and he had a tendency to tire after 70 minutes.

His tactical understanding was also enhanced, as he occasionally played for Everton from the right flank, most memorably in a victory over Arsenal and the pair replicated the trick at the World Cup in Russia in 2018, when Lukaku played from the wing and De Bruyne started as a false nine in the quarter-final victory over Brazil.

Hazard recalled: “Even before the match, we thought ‘What is he doing?’ That is the match that is the reference point for him as a manager and us as a generation of players.” Lukaku’s role, he explained, was not to defend from the wing. He told this week’s documentary: “I had a square in which I had to stay if they attacked us. That was the match where I thought ‘Yes, he (Martinez) did it for us.'”

Martinez’s trust in Lukaku increasingly seeps into public life in Belgium. At this point, his talent is undeniable, perhaps even for the bigoted parent from an opposing youth team who quizzically demanded to see Lukaku’s ID as an 11-year-old. The man refused to believe the striker had presented his genuine age.

The striker’s relationship with the national team fan base has been fraught and tense at different times. When he wrote a first-person article for The Players’ Tribune, Lukaku described his early days as a teenager in the national team set-up. He wrote: “When things were going well, I was reading newspaper articles and they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker. When things weren’t going well, they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker of Congolese descent.”

Ahead of the World Cup in 2018, Lukaku claimed that he and his brother Jordan, a defender at Lazio, had been playing with their “backs against the wall” when it came to public opinion and it is true there were occasions his performances were jeered by Belgian supporters. When a reporter pointed out that he also received a standing ovation after a 4-0 win over Saudi Arabia in 2018, Lukaku pointed out that he had received “one applause in nine years”.

Lukaku, according to those who know him, does not afford trust easily. Martinez privately describes a smart and emotional character who, once he lets you in, will grant you everything he possesses but not everybody is able to unlock the code to his heart.

He has spoken openly about an immensely challenging childhood, where his mother Adolphine worked as a cleaner and his father Roger, an ex-footballer in Belgium, had struggled to provide financial security. At the local SJABI school, the general director noticed that Lukaku kept missing the bus and gifted him a bike to cycle to school.

One local youth coach noticed at a tournament that Lukaku’s boots were shattered and worn out. He responded by presenting Lukaku with a fresh pair and when the striker later broke through at Anderlecht, he ensured the coach had a full season of access to matches at the club’s home stadium.

In his Players’ Tribune piece, he portrays a scene where his mother would add the water to the remains of milk to make it last longer, while he also says there were weeks where the electricity cut out, as well as the hot water, and he remembers going to school after Zinedine Zidane’s volley in the 2002 Champions League final and pretending to have seen the goal because his family could no longer afford cable television.

It was then that he made his mother a promise to conquer the world and two decades on, he is staying true to his pledge. Adolphine is hands-on in his career and Martinez recalls the pride she demonstrated when visiting Lukaku and his manager at the Everton training ground.

Lukaku’s talent has never been a secret. He signed for Anderlecht at the age of 14 and, after making his debut at the age of 16, he scored 33 goals in 73 games before Chelsea signed him at 18. Chelsea had received clips of Anderlecht youth games and Sebastian Arnesen, the scout and son of Chelsea’s then sporting director Frank Arnesen, had observed Lukaku from the age of 13. Didier Drogba, Lukaku’s childhood hero, personally intervened to help convince the striker to move to London. From certain quarters, the appreciation has always been present.

Now it should be unanimous.

(Photo: Evgenia Novozhenina – Pool/Getty Images)