Around this time last summer, Romelu Lukaku completed his “dream move” of rejoining Chelsea in a $120 million transfer from Inter Milan. Only a year later, he’s back at Inter for less than $15 million. How did it go so wrong?
I have to admit, I thought that Romelu Lukaku was the one to break the Chelsea striker curse. Out of all of Chelsea’s record-breaking striker transfers, I really believed that Lukaku was going to outshine them all.
He already had the experience of playing top-level Premier League football (2014-2017 Everton, 2017-19 Manchester United). Plus, he had 118 Premier League goals (prior to the 2021/22 season) to show for his labors.
And he was coming off his greatest ever club season as he was the second leading goal scorer in Serie A (26 Goals in 36 Games Played) and won a winner’s medal for Inter Milan’s league title victory. This move was destined to succeed.
Yet, like with every Chelsea striker, something was bound to go wrong. In Lukaku’s case, it was the simple fact that he never wanted to leave Inter Milan in the first place. As I said, Inter Milan had just won the Italian League title and were overwhelming favorites to win it again next season.
But the club had some money troubles. Well, 245 million euros worth of money troubles.
Yes, the team that had just become champions of all Italy had lost nearly a quarter-billion in revenue, meaning that someone had to go to recoup the losses. First, it was five-time Serie A winning manager/head coach, Antonio Conte, who resigned after the club said they couldn’t pay for new players.
Next, it was Romelu Lukaku.
Lukaku’s $120 million valuation by Chelsea made up for half of the lost revenue alone, so it was a no brainer for the Inter Milan’s ownership group to let Lukaku leave. But, like I said, he did not want to go, and it showed every time he put on a Chelsea jersey.
The first sign of his discomfort was that Lukaku was snakebit, as he couldn’t score a goal even if he was the only player on the field.
Worse yet, his poor first-touch technique was getting overly looked at and criticized as his goal scoring fell off. Thus, Lukaku started getting less and less involved in the attacking build-ups, sometimes having less than 10 touches/half.
Now, if you thought that was bad, Lukaku’s infamous Sky Italia interview made the situation even worse. Lukaku openly said he was unhappy at Chelsea, and he wanted to GO BACK to Inter Milan as soon as possible. Mind you, this all happened in January, less than six months after leaving Inter for $120 million.
Yeah, Chelsea fans were only slightly aggravated.
Lukaku was immediately dropped to the bench for a massive game against Liverpool (Chelsea drew 2-2), which all but sealed Chelsea’s hopes for the Premier League title last season.
Fast forward to June now, and Chelsea are already in advanced talks with Leeds United’s Raphinha to fill their Number 9 void. It seems Lukaku has already become a distant memory for the Blues.
Move over Fernando Torres, Gonzalo Higuain, Timo Werner, Andriy Shevchenko, and Alvaro Morata, you need to make room for yet another failed Chelsea striker.
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