An international goalscoring record set by former Manchester United trainee David Healy has been broken.
Healy played three competitive games for Manchester United at the start of his career, making his debut in 1999. He went onto play the majority of his career in the Football League, before hitting international heights with Northern Ireland in the mid-2000s.
Healy set a European Championship qualifying goalscoring record in the build-up to Euro 2008, scoring 13 goals in one campaign.
This was matched by Robert Lewandowski in 2016, but has never been bettered until now, with a former Manchester United forward breaking the record.
Lukaku broke the record in spectacular style last night, scoring four goals in the first half alone to lead Belgium to a 5-0 win over an Azerbaijan side which beat Victor Lindelof's Sweden 3-0 last week.
The Belgian has 79 international goals in total, and is only 30. Cristiano Ronaldo has the all-time record with 128, and counting.
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Lukaku played for Manchester United between 2017 and 2019. He is now playing under former Red Devils boss Jose Mourinho at Roma, where he has struck nine club goals this season in 14 games.
Cristiano Ronaldo's best haul in a European qualifying campaign for Portugal came in 2020 when he struck 12, one short of David Healy's 13.
Lukaku's 14 is an impressive tally, coming in just eight games. It is a record which could last a long time.
European Championship qualifying highest scorers in an individual campaign Here is a list of the top individual goalscorer records in single qualifying campaigns since the tournament began, per UEFA.com.
14Romelu Lukaku (Belgium) 2024
13David Healy (Northern Ireland) 2008Robert Lewandowski (Poland) 2016
12Harry Kane (England) 2020Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (Netherlands) 2012Davor Suker (Croatia) 1996
11Eran Zahavi (Israel) 2020Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) 2020Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden) 2016Raul Gonzalez (Spain) 2000Toni Polster (Austria) 1996Ole Madsen (Denmark) 1964