There is a particular kind of footballer who never quite gets the credit his numbers demand. Romelu Lukaku has spent most of his career being that footballer. Too physical for some, too direct for others, perpetually underestimated by the panels that decide football's highest individual honours — until 2021, when the jury finally acknowledged what his goal tally had been screaming for years. At 12th place in that year's Ballon d'Or standings, Lukaku became one of the few Belgian players in history to crack the top tier of the world's most prestigious individual award.

The season that earned him that 12th-place finish was, by any objective measure, one of the finest of his career. At Inter Milan under Antonio Conte, Lukaku had been the beating heart of a side that ended the club's decade-long wait for a Serie A title, winning the Scudetto in the 2020-21 season with a swagger that the Nerazzurri faithful had nearly forgotten existed. Bio - a verifier Lukaku contributed 24 league goals and 11 assists in all competitions that season, numbers that placed him among the most productive centre-forwards in Europe. His partnership with Lautaro Martínez became one of the most feared attacking duos on the continent, a combination of raw power and sharp instinct that dismantled defences with mechanical efficiency.

What made Lukaku's Inter period particularly compelling was its context. He had arrived in Milan in the summer of 2019 from Manchester United, where a difficult spell had left question marks hanging over his head. Critics had branded him slow, one-dimensional, a striker who could bully lower defences but would be found wanting at the highest level. Conte, who had a particular gift for rebuilding footballers' confidence and redirecting their strengths, saw something different. Under his management, Lukaku became a complete target man — dominant in the air, devastating on the turn, and, crucially, a link player of genuine quality. The transformation was stark enough to silence most of his detractors, at least temporarily.

For Belgium, Lukaku's 2021 Ballon d'Or nomination coincided with a period of national expectation. The so-called Golden Generation — built around Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard, and Lukaku himself — was approaching what many assumed would be its final serious tilt at a major international trophy. Lukaku had been Belgium's all-time leading scorer for some time, a record that underlined just how central he was to his country's footballing identity. His 12th-place finish in the Ballon d'Or that year was, in many respects, a recognition not only of his club form but of his status as one of the pillars of European football's last great generation of collectively brilliant national teams.

In 2021, the ceremony marked the first time since the award's modern era that a Belgian striker of his profile had placed inside the top 15.

His nomination also arrived during a summer of movement. Lukaku's transfer back to Chelsea in August 2021 for a reported fee in the region of £97.5 million made him one of the most expensive players in football history and came loaded with expectation. The reunion with his boyhood club, as he described it publicly, was framed as the missing piece for Thomas Tuchel's Champions League holders. The reality proved more complicated, but the Ballon d'Or recognition — awarded on the basis of the 2020-21 campaign at Inter rather than what followed at Stamford Bridge — stood as confirmation that he had reached the summit of his powers.

Lukaku's story carries a broader resonance within the Ballon d'Or's long history. Across 69 editions of the men's award between 1956 and 2025, Belgium has accumulated 56 nominations without ever producing a winner — one of the sport's most glaring statistical absences given the depth of talent the country has generated. Lukaku's single nomination adds one more entry to that count, a testament to what he achieved but also a quiet reminder of how ruthlessly competitive the award remains. In a decade increasingly defined by the dominance of Lionel Messi, who has accumulated a record eight Ballon d'Or titles, and Cristiano Ronaldo with five, the space available for a striker of Lukaku's particular style was always going to be narrow. That he broke through even once places him in distinguished company.

"I had a great season and I'm happy to be recognised among the best players in the world," Lukaku said at the time of the nomination. (L'Équipe, October 2021)

It was a characteristically measured statement from a player who had learned, through years of public scrutiny, to channel ambition into performance rather than rhetoric. Whether his 2021 nomination remains his only appearance in the Ballon d'Or rankings or whether future seasons bring further recognition, it stands as a defining data point in the career of Belgian football's greatest goalscorer.