MAR 31, 2018
Scores in a 2-0
victory over Swansea
City and becomes
the fifth-youngest
player to get 100
Premier League
goals.
JUN 6, 2018
Becomes Belgium’s
all-time leading
scorer with his 31st
goal in a 3-0 victory
over Egypt.AUG 26, 2019
Scores on his
Serie A debut as
Inter beat Lecce 4-0.Germinal Ekeren, Mechelen and Ostende,
as well as the Zaire – now Democratic
Republic of Congo – national team.
Slim and lithe, Lukaku senior did not
have anything like his son’s muscular
mass but he was a fine finisher all the
same, particularly dangerous with his
potent left-footed shooting.
If Romelu and his younger brother
Jordan – who these days plays left-back
for Serie A rivals Lazio – are now both
senior Belgium internationals, dad Roger
must take a lot of the credit. He passed
on the love of the game to his kids,
encouraged them to sign for his old club
FC Boom as toddlers and had plenty of
good advice to offer. Romelu and Jordan’s
parents divorced when the children were
in their early teens, but Roger remained
their footballing guide and mentor,
especially uncompromising when
dishing out discipline.
“You will never catch me in a nightclub
sipping champagne,” Romelu once
explained. “In our house, the word
‘disco’ had a diabolical meaning. After
Anderlecht clinched the Belgian league
title in 2010 I remember asking my
father if I could go to a nightclub.
“My dad wouldn’t allow it because
I had school the next day. “
At the end of Roger’s footballing
career he suffered no end of economicdifficulties. Steady work was hard to find
and the family lapsed into penury. No car,
no cash for bills, hardly enough money
for food and definitely no luxuries. Times
were tough and it was at this point that
Lukaku made a life-defining promise to
his loved ones as well as himself.
“Some days I’d come home from
school to find my mum crying,” he said
in a no-holds barred interview on the
Players’ Tribune website in 2018. “So I
finally told her one day: ‘Mum, it’s going
to change. You’ll see. I’m going to play
football for Anderlecht. It’s going to
happen soon. We’ll be good. You
won’t have to worry anymore’. I was six.”
Suddenly football was not only a
game to him; it was a means to an end,
a route out of poverty and despair. He
now had a mission and put his heart
and soul into making a name for himself,
impressing in the schoolboy ranks of
FC Boom and KFC Wintam, scoring
goals galore at the Lierse academy,
then decamping at the age of 13 to
Anderlecht, where he would continue
to whip up a storm.
Not for one moment did he ever doubt
his capacity to climb to the top.
“In Romelu, I discovered a 16-year-old
of great mental toughness,” said his old
Anderlecht coach Jacobs. “That’s what
has brought him so far.”Sportmagazine. “[Before he arrived],
I’d play good matches and bad. Now
I only put in good performances.
“I’m not just speaking for myself.
There’s Eden [Hazard], Kevin [De Bruyne],
Meunier, Carrasco. Since he [Martinez]
turned up there, we have many more
players who are up for it.”
Not surprisingly Lukaku does not
include Mourinho and Solskjaer on
the “debt of gratitude” list.
Solskjaer simply did not rate him,
while Mourinho took a long time to be
convinced. Shortly after beginning his
second spell in charge of Chelsea, in the
summer of 2013, Mourinho was adamant
that Lukaku – fresh from a successful
temporary posting at West Brom – was
still too raw to make a Stamford Bridge
first-team impact, recommending
another loan spell, this time with
Everton. Lukaku felt slighted.
He only played a handful of games
under Mourinho at Chelsea but the pair
did work well together for a good season
and a half at Manchester United,
and for a period they functioned hand
in glove, Lukaku plundering 11 goals in
his first 10 appearances for United and
Mourinho regularly praising the Belgian
for his work ethic.
They say that the apple never falls far
from the tree and the phrase definitely is
appropriate in Lukaku’s case. His father
Roger was an excellent striker himself,
starring in the
1990s for Belgian
sides Seraing,
Romelu Lukaku
Unconvinced...a rare
game under Jose
Mourinho at ChelseaBrothers...on
international duty
with Jordan (left)“I told [mum] one day: ‘I’m going to
play football for Anderlecht. It’s
going to happen soon’... I was six”