04 June 2023 , 21:00
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His is one of the most inspirational stories in football.
Which is why Romelu Lukaku will not be defined by Istanbul next Saturday.
Nor will he be so desperate for Champions League success against Manchester City that he loses all perspective. Inter Milan’s Belgian striker - on loan from Chelsea - is emotional, tearful even, as he provides a powerful, poignant context to his arrival at the final of the biggest game in European club football.
As a child he watched his mother, Adolphine, mix water with milk to make it last longer for him and his brothers. He saw her ‘borrow’ bread from the local bakery because she didn’t have the money to pay for it after his dad Roger’s retirement from his own professional career.
The money had gone. Never mind luxuries like satellite TV. The Lukaku family would have no electricity for weeks at a time. It was as a 12-year-old that Romelu promised his grandfather, days before his death, that he would “look after” Adolphine, his daughter.
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Eighteen years on, having kept that vow several times over, Lukaku has an Italian title in the bag and is preparing to play in the Champions League Final. Little wonder the magnitude of the achievement and the question around what his grandfather would think of this moment reduced the striker to tears.
“All the goals that I have scored - everything," he said. "I promised him that I would look after my mum, when I was 12, I did that. So every time when I look at my mum and I see her in the stands, I look at him [points upwards] after every goal and I say, I did it.
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Lukaku has already won the Coppa Italia with Inter Milan this season (Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)“It doesn't matter - wins or losses, I take it in my stride. These are real family issues. So, for me he meant the world to me.”
Among his accolades, Lukaku is already Belgium’s all-time top goalscorer. He has been the MVP (Most Valuable Player) at Inter where he has lifted the Scudetto in 2021 and he was the joint second-highest scorer at the 2018 World Cup.
In a world of snap judgments and knee jerkers on social media, most of whom know nothing about the men they are pontificating on, Lukaku’s journey is an education. Five years ago he attracted an avalanche of respect for the full, unvarnished truth of his story, powerfully told on the Players Tribune website.
His preparations to play in the Champions League Final - after being exiled by Chelsea last summer - come with even more inspirational background. Particularly as Lukaku missed ten years of watching Finals on TV with his family unable to afford it.
Instead he had to go to school and download the action during computer class.
Lukaku went on: “I feel blessed that I'm in this position because I have a very good memory so I can remember perfectly all those years, so many finals that I wanted to watch that I just couldn't.
"I'd go to school and watch them on YouTube. I would lie and stuff. Then they would let me in and I'd go watch and then I'd have my classmates telling me: ‘Oh, yeah, this happened’.
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“I'd be like, ‘Yeah I saw that!' but to be honest, to be in this position now, to have my family there, it would be a beautiful thing because then it has all come full circle.’ I couldn't watch, but now, by the grace of God, I can play one.”