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For a guy tasked with promoting Crabbie’s Grand National sponsorship, Romelu Lukaku is pretty clueless on a British institution.

“I know it’s a horse race - in Liverpool? - but that’s it. I’ll ask Ossie (Leon Osman) or Phil (Jagielka), for advice. I only follow football and basketball,” Everton's on-loan Chelsea striker laughs of the race backed by one of the Toffees' sponsors.

It is said with a playful honesty, showing his relaxed nature off the pitch, where he is, he says, “not quiet, but I am a funny guy, a dreamer.”

On the pitch though, it all changes.

“I’m passionate on the pitch, I have aggression. When it comes down to work, I put in every drop to be the best that I can to help my team-mates, to win.

“I put the work in seriously, I take the game seriously. I have done that since I was six years old, because I have always wanted to be the best. It is inside me.”

Interestingly, that is where the basketball comes in.

He was decent at it as a kid growing up in Belgium, and reckons he could have made it in that sport, too. In the NBA?

“Maybe,” he smiles. “As a point guard.”

By the age of 13 he knew his life would be football, but he retains that early love, and particularly an admiration of Los Angeles Lakers talisman Kobe Bryant, which has shaped his outlook and driven his career.

“Kobe - he’s an inspiration because I admire his ambition, his desire to be the best,” Lukaku explains, and the smile drops for a second as he describes the 35-year-old American.

“Even now, at his age, he still has that determination, that aggressiveness within him to be the best, the main man, to be a winner. That drive is what I admire.

“And yeah, I have that drive. I play with passion. I have the same determination to be the best I can be. I only had one example in football and that was Drogba. But my biggest example in sports was Kobe - for me, it is everything.”

At the age of 20, it is surprising to hear a kid - and he’s still a kid in football terms, no matter how physically imposing - speak so directly, and so eloquently, about his ambitions to reach the top.

In doing so, Lukaku finally nails the disagreement between him and his Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho that seems to have rumbled on all season, after his apparently less-than-harmonious switch to Everton on a year-long loan.

“My desire to improve and be the best I can be explains everything - I could have stayed at Chelsea and played a few games this season, but how can you reach your best level if you have a year when you don’t play so much?” he says calmly.

“As a youngster, you normally have to play. How will you be one of the best not playing? Look at Rooney, Ronaldo, Drogba - every top striker. They always played.

“They played constantly, always, all the time. Games, games, games. I just want to be one of them - that is my ambition, I just want to be one of those guys, I don’t play football to show off or to make money, I play because of my pride and because I love the game.

“I know I am good at it sometimes, but good is not good enough - you have to be perfect. That’s why I am here. To play games, to help the team reach that level, and to improve my game. If we get fourth I’ll be proud of myself.”

And the fallout with Mourinho, which came after Lukaku missed a pivotal penalty in a shoot-out loss to Bayern Munich in August's UEFA Super Cup? Has he burnt his Chelsea bridges to the ground with no hope of return?

“Ha! People said there were arguments,” he responds with a smile. “There were arguments in the press and stuff, but I don’t know where it came from. I just spoke to him and said hopefully what I wanted as a player and he was okay with it.

“Then I had the opportunity to go. The feeling I had after three games at Chelsea, I was really hoping for a starting spot, because of the season before when I had scored goals. But it’s a big club, there is real competition, and they said there was a feeling I had to stay patient again.

“And the feeling that I had from my first year came up again, and I knew I had to go. Because how you could be on the bench after the year I had last year? Because I still want to progress. I don’t want to be a one-season show.

(Image: Getty)

“I just constantly want to impress people, constantly to hit people in the eye, like, 'Whoa, that Lukaku guy, he’s a good player! Wow, we need to follow him. That Lukaku guy, he’s a good player, bang, bang.'

“I want to hear people say that because then I know I’ll have to do even better, because the next time they see me it has to be better - better than the year before.”

What better place to show his progression than in Sunday’s showdown with Arsenal - a game billed as a Champions League decider as the two sides chase fourth-place, and one that Lukaku is relishing with a real glint in his eye.

He is ready to take himself and the Goodison club to another level.

“I knew on the day I arrived at Everton I would be playing at the right level, but I didn’t know it would be this special - I thought maybe fifth, sixth. But when you are so close to fourth, why stop?" he adds.

“Now is the time to man up and put the work in and try to embrace the moment. You have to embrace those moments that define you, and not be scared. I try to embrace those moments, that is why in the last weeks I am playing in a good way, I know that I can dominate players.

“We just have to beat Arsenal at the weekend, and then everything is in our hands. It is Arsenal, they are a big club with a big manager but we don’t have to be scared - we have to dictate the play and make sure we enjoy our moment on the pitch, and if we do that we have a great chance.

“Look, top four is achievable. It is realistic - we have a good team, we have good young players, but great experienced players, a great mix. If we want to do it, we have to do it now.”

And if they do, what next?

The chance of playing in the Champions League with Everton is an inviting one, he admits, whether on another loan or in a permanent deal.

His agent has revealed he’s already had talks with the Toffees, as well as Spurs, but he remains a Chelsea player and could yet stay with them if offered the chance to fight for a regular start.

Yet the focus remains, Kobe Bryant-like, on taking the most out of the present moment.

“Because the team is playing well and personally I have been doing well there is a lot of speculation about teams being interested.

“For me it’s good. When there is interest it shows you are doing your job. I am happy with that, but I want to remain calm. It’s all good, I just want to help my team-mates to get to fourth, and then I will start talking.

“You have those conversations at the end of the season. Now, in April, May, you hear when there are clubs interested in you, but for me the most important thing - the only thing - is to help the club get fourth, and from then on we will see.”

* Romelu Lukaku was speaking ahead of the Grand National, sponsored by Crabbie’s, the official ginger beer of Everton Football Club.