Friday June 18, 2021
Belgium’s top scorer Lukaku
A guy that the DFB team urgently needs
By Sebastian Schneider
Romulu Lukaku is already one of the stars of the European Football Championship. Together with Belgium’s golden generation, he has a good chance of winning the title. Much more counts for him than what is happening on the pitch.
Romelu didn’t hit Lukaku this time. What has now become a rarity. He has scored 42 goals in his 44 international matches for Belgium since the 2016 European Championship. There were more important things that evening. When the whole stadium rose and applauded for Christian Eriksen after the tenth minute, tears also flowed from Lukaku. Visibly moved, this massive 1.91-meter man fell into the arms of BVB professional Thomas Delaney and Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel.
The game yesterday actually took a back seat. After all, it took place at the place where Lukaku’s friend and teammate at Inter Milan, Christian Eriksen, fought for his life less than a week ago. The entire world public watched on this sunny Saturday afternoon as the Dane narrowly escaped death. Lukaku too. He later said that he recently spent more time with Eriksen than with his family.
“It was pretty hard to pull myself together,” said Lukaku, who played with his Belgian national team against Russia that same evening, said: “It was really difficult for me to focus. But my team-mates helped me.” He shed a few tears. He later played football anyway.
“Chris, Chris, I love you!”
And how: Lukaku met in the tenth minute in the Russia game. He was actually offside, but two Russian defenders extended a failed cross from Dries Mertens. And so Lukaku just had to push the ball in free standing in front of the opposing goalkeeper. He could not be taken away from it. Then a scene was created that also went around the world. To cheer Lukaku ran to the TV camera and called to his friend in the hospital: “Chris, Chris, I love you!”
It’s not just the connection to Christian Eriksen that makes Lukaku one of the stars of the European Championship. With his two goals so far and the promising Belgian team, the exceptional striker has a good chance of leaving the tournament as the best scorer. It is also his origins that make him one of the remarkable players at this European Championship.
The 28-year-old grew up in Antwerp, Brussels and Liège. In his childhood he lived in absolute poverty. Like him in “The Players Tribune” relates that his father was a professional footballer himself, but the money was quickly used up after the end of his career. Bit by bit, the lifestyle deteriorated. At some point they could no longer afford football on television, then not even the television and later no electricity. Rats ran around the apartment. At some point Lukaku had to watch his mother stretch the cornflakes with water. For him, football was the way out of poverty. He therefore approaches every game like a final, said the goal scorer.
Like probably many young black footballers, Lukaku also had more or less direct experiences of racism. In the “Players Tribune” he describes how he was asked to show his passport when he was eleven because the father of an opponent had doubts about his identity. And it didn’t get any better in professional football either. After his first appearances, the press wrote about him: If it went well, he was the Belgian stumbler. If things went bad, he was the attacker with Congolese roots.
Goals, goals, goals
Such moments haunted him later in his career. After his breakthrough in Belgium, he moved to England for Chelsea, but was never really able to assert himself there. The Blues awarded him twice, first to West Brom, then to Everton. From then on it was only after Manchester United. Sorted out there, he moved to Inter Milan. The potential was always there, but Lukaku never managed to exploit it consistently. Overall flowed loudly transfermarkt.de Over 210 million euros transfer and loan fees.
It wasn’t until Milan that something changed. Lukaku’s game got better tactically. It literally exploded. In 72 Serie A games, he scored a total of 47 times. In the Europa League 2019/20 he met in all games with Inter. Together with the four EL games at Everton in 2015/16, there are now ten consecutive games with goals scored – a record.
He traveled to the EM with a form high. Across all competitions, he scored 30 goals in 44 games for Inter this year. His imposing physique, the high speed: some commentators only talk about how it is unfortunately often with black footballers. Often game intelligence is attributed to its fellow players, and Lukaku has a lot of that. In a summary of the Denmark game he is called a “Usain-Bolt-Double”. It is not mentioned that he has an eye for Kevin De Bruyne in the backcourt in the full sprint before the 1-1 draw. Even in the 1-0 win against the Russians, Lukaku’s cleverness and understanding of the game was also part of lurking for Andrei Semyonov’s mistake offside.
“Heard things you should never hear in football”
Two years ago Lukaku had to listen to monkey sounds and insults at an away game in Cagliari before a penalty kick. His team-mate Milan Skriniar defended him at the time: “I’ve heard things that you should never hear in football. Things like that should never happen again.” Lukaku was shocked: “It’s 2019 and we’re going backwards.”
The fact that the further development is still within limits two years later is also clear at the EM. Based on the “Black Lives Matter” movement, the Belgians kneeled against racism at their European Championship kick-off in St. Petersburg. But the Russian audience was not very impressed by the action: the fans whistled and booed tirelessly. Lukaku held up his fist.
The striker then did it like he always did. He scored his goals. After the game, he was voted “Star of the Match” for his two hits. While the Russian coach was pushing around at the fans’ whistles, Lukaku left his statement on the pitch and was glad that his friend Eriksen was doing better.
There is a longing for this type of player in the German national team. Not only because he is an excellent center forward, who Joachim Löw lacks, but also because he consistently shows his attitude. Sure, there are also players in the DFB team like Serge Gnabry, Leon Goretzka and Joshua Kimmich who speak out publicly on issues beyond football. But not as consistently as Romulo Lukaku.
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