Bad First-Touches and Disposable Achievements. Is Romelu Lukaku Over-hated?
In recent years, Romelu Lukaku has been the butt of jokes. “Lakaka”, “IL Muflone”, “Donkey”. His form on the pitch has been a shadow of what he is capable of. Off the pitch, there is a never-ending choir of drama following him, singing his bad moments, tarnishing his image in the process. Everyone seems to have forgotten how good he is because of recent events. Is Lukaku over-hated? Are the criticisms blown out of proportion? If he decided to hang up his boots today, how will he be remembered, a hero, a villian or a meme? Recency bias rules the way we as fans judge athletes. We’ve always judged players, even now, by their current form but always forget what they achieved in the past, how hard they worked to get to where they are today.
Romelu Lukaku was born in Antwerpen, Belgium, to Congolese parents. He started turning heads at Anderlecht and from there he went to Chelsea, loaned to West Brom in 2012; then a permanent transfer to Everton where his career really took off. The Belgian scored 87 goals in 166 appearances for the Toffees before making a big money move to Manchester United. After falling out with the club, he left for the Italian Serie A with Inter Milan in 2019. He made a big move to Chelsea in 2021, his homecoming, but that hasn’t ended well so far, I will just leave it at that.
His career has taken a downturn since then, a horrible showing at the 2022 World Cup with Belgium, and a night to forget at the most recent Champions League final against Manchester City. The question now is — where does Lukaku go from here? Obviously back to Chelsea for preseason ahead of the 2023/2024 season, but what happens now? Will he, ever get back to his best?
Now to the main course.
For most of his career, Romelu Lukaku has been ridiculed for his technique on the ball (obviously bad but debatable), his clumsiness, shocking misses, and everything else under the sun with his name involved.
It’s hard not to laugh, but we know he’s capable of this:
Lukaku is the type of striker most teams will be happy to have. His pace, power and ability to score is incredible. At 30 years, he is still a world-class striker and has more to offer. Lukaku has achieved so much — 288 goals total in 600 appearances is no mean feat. He’s Belgium’s all-time top scorer with 75 goals and he’s not even retired yet.
Now let’s talk about recency bias and its role in sports, in this case football. According to an article from Sports Direct, recency bias is a “cognitive bias in which those items, ideas, or arguments that came last are remembered more clearly than those that came first”. If Lukaku were to retire today, what will he be remembered for? Recency bias in the game influences the way we judge players, coaches, and teams. If a player scored 100 goals over the years and recently had a bad season, that player will be remembered for that one bad season. Social media plays a huge role in this. Among the toxicity, hilariously bad takes, you will find fail compilations, hate tweets masked as criticism which sometimes morph into low-key casual racism, arrogant ‘tacticos’ (tactical experts) claiming to know better, and random people swearing they are better than professionals. One bad performance and suddenly you are made to be the worst player in history. No one ever thinks about the players, how that might impact them. Imagine being a player, you have a bad game, and against the advice of those close to you, find yourself scrolling through social media, to find the world against you, blatantly racist DMs, people telling you that your life and all you achieved are worth nothing. How would you feel? What does this say about us fans? As fans, we want to watch our favourite teams and be happy with what we see. We sometimes set ridiculously high standards for them, a goalpost that keeps shifting. We forget that they are people too, not robots, not characters on FIFA or Football Manager. Recency bias in the game also shows a level of short-sightedness amongst fans, we always think of the now and forget about the journey. Playing at the highest level is not for everyone, and we as fans forget that. We forget the sacrifices many of those players made to get to that level. For Lionel Messi, it was leaving his life in Argentina; for Sadio Mane, it was leaving his family at age 16 to pursue his dream, making a bet that could have gone either way. Every footballer sacrificed something to get to where they are today, they left their families, their homes, a life of familiarity to go out into the world, chasing a dream.
Lukaku has been the subject of abuse from fans and pundits in recent years. Simply because his missed a chance, took a bad first-touch, got in the way of a goal-bound shot. Obviously Lukaku hasn’t really helped himself either, by publicly calling out his manager at Chelsea, releasing sensitive information to the public when he was at Manchester United. As a professional, you are held to high standards, to be an example to young players aspiring to reach the level you are, and he fell short of those standards on multiple occasions. Despite all the insanity around his image, is he still good enough? Will he ever gain back the respect he lost? What will he be remembered for when his story ends? The memories of his incredible career and ability as a player have vanished because of his recent form and the drama surrounding him. Now all everyone remembers him for is his bad first-touch, shocking misses, and the memes (those never go away). All he achieved — the records, goals, laurels, have become disposable, tossed in the bin with no hope of reminiscing and celebration. Even though he is to blame for part of his woes, it can’t be entirely his fault. Football is a funny game, even the best lose momentum, hit a bad patch of form, lose themselves to the point where it affects their performances on the pitch. I wonder if Lukaku has lost himself, allowed all the noise to get to him, that he forgot how to play the sport that brought him joy as a kid. If this is what being an athlete at the big stage can do to you, then I don’t know if I want any part of it. I don’t know if I would enjoy the game anymore, see it the same way as fans like myself do. I don’t know how I could cope with the constant abuse after misplacing a pass, missing a header, dropping a 6.6 match-rating on SofaScore.
I’ve been watching football ever since I gained consciousness to view a tv screen. I grew up a child of the game — infatuated by the way Messi weaves through defenses, the intensity and excitement of Jurgen Klopp’s Dortmund, Ibrahimovic’s insane bicycle-kick against England, Manchester City’s incredible last-gap Premier League title win, Ghana’s iconic run in the 2010 World Cup which ended in tears for what could have been. My obsession with football continues to grow (still growing) an above average understanding of the game. This has led me to be slightly more sympathetic towards players, even if I get mad at them for falling below meeting my unrealistic expectations. They have a tough job. They have the expectations of thousands, even millions riding on their shoulders. I may never know what goes on behind the scenes in their lives; what their situation is like off the pitch, on the training ground, when the cameras stop filming. I along with the other fans can only read between the lines based on rumours from the tabloids, and form an opinion. If there is something I want you to take away from this piece, it’s that — athletes are people too. Sure, they may have more money than the average person, the nice cars, and all the brand deals, but they are still people. They breathe the same air we do, drink water like us even if it’s the expensive kind. They have a life outside of football. They have families, hobbies, pets, Twitch channels. As a fan, we don’t see all that but we must acknowledge their humanity. Even if they make a 100 gaffes.
The statistics used in this story are from Transfermarkt.
Thanks for reading :)
