...NOT THIS

Lukaku wants to fire Belgium’s World Cup bid even more than he wants to be the top scorer

the team to win and fulfil his role. His role is someone who can score goals.

“I think his role now with the national team has become that. I think before there was a bit of confusion.

“When you ask him to do too many things he’s not good at, he becomes a bit diluted in terms of his performance.

“I think Rom knows now what his role is, like I hope every other player does on the pitch, because that’s the only way we can become a team.

“I wouldn’t expect any player to work towards an individual award in this tournament.

“The players know exactly what they have to do in order to try to help the team become a winning team.”

Belgium have an abundance of individual talent, including Lukaku (below), Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne and a host of other established Premier League stars. But they have so far failed to deliver at a major tournament, although Martinez has worked hard to blend the individual talent at his disposal into an effective team.

“We want to be boring,” said Martinez. “We’re a football team. We’re not here to bring stories or try to fill pages for the wrong reasons.

“We want to be a group that can find a way to get the best of all of the exceptional individual talent we have, because we’ve got footballers who are in a very good moment of their careers, who have big roles at club level.

“But this is the national team, it’s unique, it’s a special moment in your career. We’re not here to find blame, we’re not here to find a way out.

“We’re here to work hard for each other and to try to fulfil the potential we have. I think we’ve got a real focus on being accountable.”