A summer of joy watching Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku control the World Cup

Space becomes a cruel, taunting expanse when you can no longer control its boundaries. One can be haunted in multiple dimensions when they can’t comprehend how they lost their way. Distance becomes a mirage and leeway a mirror into death on one’s field of play. Jamal Crawford can famously hijack your safe confines with dancing crossovers. Jason Peters can impede your reality as he stuffs you backwards against your will. Power often cannot be regulated. It is gifted to those worthy of its weight. It is why athletes like Romelu Lukaku must be seen not merely as strikers, but as gods of the pitch. Athletes like him are rare, and they destroy any barriers of control.

The World Cup has provided frightening reminders of his destructiveness. Against Japan in the group stage, in the last minute, Lukaku enacted a beautiful counter-attack then dummied the ball in the box for Belgium to win — a dangerous attempt for any player in such a situation. In another moment, he confused a defender by sagging from his natural middle position to the left of the pitch only to smash a low cross back across the box to a teammate for a goal. Playing Tunisia, at one moment he humiliated the defense with a quick-sprint into the box. At another, Lukaku flashed, maybe, a dozen stutter-steps and juke moves within 20 yards of the box that nearly sat a defender. None of these displays took more than 15 seconds.

These talented flaunts are the product of a high work rate, massive intelligence, and a world-class talent contained within the 25-year old firecracker. Every time I witness such feats, I think of what Lukaku said at the beginning of the summer soccer tournament, laying bare the poverty his family suffered in Belgium, the loss of his grandfather, and the inheritance of his father’s dream of international glory. Lukaku wanted to work so his family could escape despair, even if that meant days alone on the road in youth club ball, proving to European families that he was as Belgian as anyone else.

“Let me tell you something — every game I ever played was a Final,” Lukaku wrote in The Player’s Tribune in June. “When I played in the park, it was a Final. When I played during break in kindergarten, it was a Final. I’m dead-ass serious. I used to try to tear the cover off the ball every time I shot it. Full power. We weren’t hitting R1, bro. No finesse shot. I didn’t have the new FIFA. I didn’t have a Playstation. I wasn’t playing around. I was trying to kill you.”

That intensity can’t help but be absorbed through the screen. The way he directs traffic while 40 yards away from goal, clearing space for Eden Hazard, Nacer Chadli and Kevin de Bruyne appears effortless. Lukaku makes an appetizer of the endless green under his eyes. His carving cuts in the box are like a butcher’s blade to brisket. Brazilian defenders like Miranda in Friday’s 2-1 winner against Brazil are helpless to the flicks and nutmegs at Lukaku’s disposal. Utilizing power in these moments does not guarantee completion. Every cut can’t lead to goals. His talent isn’t perfection, but his potential offers an illusion of the limitless. Yes, there are those games when he lifts his crown toward the heavens, asking in any of the several languages he speaks, why this strike couldn’t land, or this flick could not find its match.

Yet, watching Lukaku move feels like beholding Baldwin etch essays, or Basquiat stroke masterpieces. Science cannot capture how the Belgian twirls. We must gawk and cry with every sweep and strike. If man can not describe how Ed Oliver, a defensive tackle for the University of Houston, can move so gracefully at 300 pounds, or how Vince Wilfork or Tyron Smith can keep pace with skinnier tailbacks, or why LeBron James seems perfect on hardwood, Lukaku’s magic cannot be quantified, either.

Such attempts yield indolent solutions, especially the inhuman qualifiers onlookers have used in the past. BBC soccer pundit Mina Rzouki said in July 2017 that she’d rather have Italian striker Alvaro Morata than Lukaku on her club because she’s always preferred “an intelligent player on my team.” She said she would overpay for the Spaniard and “wouldn’t even think about it.” There’s also the countless instances of linking players of African descent, like Lukaku with his Congolese roots, in soccer commentary to quips about “pace and power.” Understandably, Lukaku has seen such efforts to diminish his might.

“When things were going well, I was reading newspapers 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,” Lukaku remembered in The Player’s Tribune.

“If you don’t like the way I play, that’s fine. But I was born here. I grew up in Antwerp, and Liège and Brussels. I dreamed of playing for Anderlecht. I dreamed of being Vincent Kompany. I’ll start a sentence in French and finish it in Dutch, and I’ll throw in some Spanish or Portuguese or Lingala, depending on what neighborhood we’re in. I’m Belgian. We’re all Belgian. That’s what makes this country cool, right? I don’t know why some people in my own country want to see me fail. I really don’t. When I went to Chelsea and I wasn’t playing, I heard them laughing at me. When I got loaned out to West Brom, I heard them laughing at me. But it’s cool. Those people weren’t with me when we were pouring water in our cereal. If you weren’t with me when I had nothing, then you can’t really understand me.”

Truthfully, “pace and power” are too simple as modifiers for a man that can make gazelle sprints in open fields appear jejune. Speed is too singular as an offering when it can be combined with grace, agility and intelligence. Is it a wonder he’s Belgium’s all-time international goal-scorer this young? The glory of the World Cup stage, soccer’s penultimate treaty, should dissuade any ill-fitting, racist notions about his meaning to this club and their zealots.

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