Romelu Lukaku had had enough recently and decided to skip the Belgium international matches. After the disappointing European Championship, he communicated this to national coach Domenico Tedesco.
After 119 international matches, Lukaku had had enough. This cannot be seen separately from the disappointing European Championships in Germany and the disappointing World Cup in Qatar. “I had enough of it for a moment,” Lukaku said in the podcast Friends of Sports en Koolcast. ‘I was like, “No man, f*ck.” Look at my years at Chelsea, Internazionale and AS Roma. I wasn’t myself. I said to the coach: “I’m choosing for myself now.” It was a physical choice, but above all a mental one. I have always played with fire for the national team, but now the fire is not burning.’
However, Belgium is not a closed book for Lukaku. ‘I hope that in the long term I can regain the passion to play for the national team, that the fire in me will burn again for the Red Devils. Because after the European Championships that is difficult at the moment. You will soon get a new opportunity at your club, but the next goal with the Red Devils is only the World Cup in two years and that still seems so far away. But the World Cup is a motivation.’
‘No, I really want to return to the national team with a good feeling. And then I certainly want to take on a leadership role, but they shouldn’t expect me to be happy if we don’t win. Because that is the only thing missing from this group: they have already come so far in terms of football, but in terms of winning mentality they can do much better. I can certainly teach that to this team.’
“We no longer have the players who play for the biggest clubs,” Lukaku continued. ‘This is no longer the generation of yesteryear. But do the players want to get to that level? Do they want to fight for it? Then they have to push themselves. If you don’t play for a certain type of team where the pressure is to always win or win titles, and you’re not the kind of person who pushes yourself, then it’s going to be very difficult when you get to the national team. That’s the problem we have.’
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