Romelu Lukaku: I need Champions League football to become world's best

Romelu Lukaku believes he must play Champions League football before he can compare himself to the world's best strikers. Romelu Lukaku believes he must play Champions League football before he can compare himself to the world's best strikers.

Romelu Lukaku believes he must play Champions League football before he can compare himself to the world's best strikers.

The Everton forward, who will face Tottenham live on Sky Sports on Nissan Super Sunday, has scored 17 goals in 25 Premier League appearances this season.

Sky Sports analyst and former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher asked Lukaku how far away he sees himself from the likes of Luis Suarez and Robert Lewandowski.

The Belgium international said: "It's difficult to compare at the moment. They have the Champions League platform to show themselves.

"Those are the top games where I need to show people I belong to them too."

Lukaku, who joined Everton from Chelsea in 2013 on loan before a £28m move a year later, sees his contract run out in the summer of 2019, but is routinely linked with a move away from Goodison Park.

He recently told Sky Sports he is happy at the club but wants to win the biggest prizes in football, with playing in the Champions League his next goal.

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Asked what separates elite strikers at the highest level, Lukaku added: "Every striker has to have that edge. When they are not scoring or when the team is losing, they explode.

"I think I have it more and more lately. When people used to talk to me about that and say, 'Rom doesn't play with passion.'

"I do but I don't show it too much because in my mind I'm a guy that thinks a lot about how to win the game.

"Sometimes I let the emotions just come now and it helps me. I need a platform where I can show myself constantly in the big games because now I am scoring over the last five or six seasons all the time in the Premier League.

"I consider myself one of the best strikers in this league, 100 per cent, but I want to show it as well on the biggest stage in the near future."