How the Champions League can show Romelu Lukaku can be a world class striker

Manchester United’s newly signed Belgian striker has already had a fine start to his United career and with the chance to play on the biggest stage possible at club level, Lukaku can show that he can be a world-class striker. 

Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker who was bought for £75 million this summer from Everton, has been one of the best strikers in the English Premier League for the past several seasons. Ever since joining West Brom on loan from Chelsea in the 2012/13 season, Lukaku has been one of the most consistent goal-scoring strikers in the league and has improved as a player every single season.

Every season, Lukaku is regularly mentioned alongside the likes of other top strikers in the league – Sergio Aguero, Harry Kane and even in the past Luis Suarez and Robin Van Persie- with his goal-scoring feats convincing many that it was only a matter of time before he joined a bigger club in the prospects of winning titles and playing on the biggest stage possible in the Champions League.

Many had predicted that Lukaku would rejoin Chelsea eventually and he was close to doing so until an unbelievable series of events saw him joining Manchester United instead and realigning with Jose Mourinho – the man who sold him from Chelsea to Everton and did not think that he was ready to warrant playing for Chelsea at a time when Chelsea’s strike line consisted of a badly declined Fernando Torres, an ageing Samuel Eto’o and a decent but not exactly good enough for a team aspiring to win a title Demba Ba.

Not only is Lukaku expected to replace the twenty-eight goals that Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored last season for Manchester United, he is now playing on the biggest stage that a player can be at for club level. The Champions League is the competition that separates the great strikers in the world from the best strikers in the world and it is the competition where Lukaku can finally show that he is indeed one of the best strikers in the world.

Lukaku has been touted as a highly talented prospect since he was a sixteen year old at Anderlecht which he has since lived up too since moving to Everton, scoring an incredible twenty-five goals in the league last season and finishing only behind Tottenham’s Harry Kane as the league’s top goal scorer.

And yet, he has perhaps gained something of a false reputation of being nothing more than what it is known as a ‘flat track bully’, the type of striker that can only perform against lower sides but fails to produce against stronger teams. For United, even if this was true, this is the exact type of striker that United were desperately in need of last season as they proceeded to draw thirteen games last season and failed to win games that really should have won.

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But on this stage, Lukaku, much like his rival Harry Kane who has also fallen victim to such claims, can prove that he is capable of much more and is capable of performing on the big stage. Lukaku has already started his United career in fine form, scoring six goals in six games and he is the perfect Jose Mourinho striker – big, muscular and strong, fast and able to hold up play while also being able to burst his way through opposition, much in the same vein as Didier Drogba  – and he will be given every tool necessary to be able to deliver in the Champions League.

While United are not expected to mount much of a serious challenge in the Champions League this season, this is the biggest opportunity that Lukaku has to go from being a striker that is considered to be one of the best strikers in England to one of the best in general.

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Lukaku has already gotten off to a great start, scoring mid-week against Basel in his Champions League debut and if he can continue his goalscoring exploits in the Champions League for however long United are still in the competition and potentially do so against the elite teams in Europe, there can be very little doubt that Lukaku deserves to have his name recognised among the elite names in football in his position – right up there with Luis Suarez, Robert Lewandowski, Harry Kane and Edinson Cavani.