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Richard Buxton·19 November 2023
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Richard Buxton·19 November 2023
There really is no stopping Romelu Lukaku at the moment.
Roma’s loanee striker continued his prolific season with four goals in 20 first-half minutes during Belgium’s final Euro 2024 qualifier with Azerbaijan.
Lukaku opened the scoring for his country on 17 minutes and had claimed the match ball by the half-hour mark with a quickfire double.
It was the fastest triple the 30-year-old had recorded since and 11-minute haul for Everton against Sunderland in September 2016.
But not content with that feat, Lukaku added a fourth in the 37th minute as he moved up two places in the all-time international goal scorers chart.
The hat-trick saw him eclipse Robert Lewandowski into eighth place before moving level with the UAE’s Ali Mabkhout on 83 strikes apiece.
He also overtook the Barcelona and Poland forward for the most goals scored in a single European Championship qualifying campaign with 14.
Domenico Tedesco elected to rest Lukaku for the second half of his country’s comfortable outing in Brussels as he made way for Loïs Openda.
After racking up 17 goals in 18 appearances for club and country this season, it was more than deserved!