I don’t mean strikers as in attackers, I mean strikers as in strikers.
And of those, he is certainly near the best in the world. Perhaps when he retires, and his records then begin to speak for themselves, would he get some credit.
The same thing happens with Andy Cole. Never comes up in any conversations about great PL strikers, despite being the third all time goalscorer (and for a long time, he was second), without taking penalties either. He doesn’t have to be likes, but he has to be respected. And Lukaku would, and should, feel that he is in any conversation about top strikers in the game. He’s the fastest player to reach 50 goals for Inter, faster than R9, he’s his country’s record goalscorer, and has scored a couple hundred league goals and counting to go with it. He will be forever overlooked for whatever reason though. A lot of the specific criticisms I’ve seen applied to his game I’ve seen in Haaland’s game too, but nobody cares. In his case, we’ll just pay attention to the numbers. And this isn’t to say Haaland isn’t great or even better, I’m saying that the metrics applied are different. For most strikers, goals tends to be the key currency. Vardy does fexk all on the pitch but score (mostly from the spot), yet is never spoken about negatively.
As I said, ‘twice as hard’ for Lukaku in my opinion.
