Romelu Lukaku is desperately trying to repair his bridges at Inter Milan to get a move back on the table after they publicly pulled away from him over annoyance at talks with Juventus.
That’s according to Gazzetta dello Sport, who cover the situation today and say that Inter are raising the walls and ignoring the Belgian’s efforts to repair their relationship.
The newspaper states that the walls being raised by the Italian club are ‘insurmountable’ at this moment in time, with their relationship very much broken after events over the last few weeks.
Inter feel Lukaku should have been calling them earlier and explaining what he was doing but, instead, he refused to speak to the club or even teammates who tried to call him to find out what was going on.
That’s infuriated most around the club and Gazzetta say bringing him back for a third spell would now be equivalent to ‘putting an explosive’ into the dressing room.
That’s not been helped by his agents trying to apportion blame to everyone else, insisting that it was Simone Inzaghi’s management which caused him to talk to Juventus.
Lukaku, in the interim, is training with Chelsea’s B-Team, out of sight of Mauricio Pochettino, who, like Inter Milan, doesn’t seem to be holding a hand out.
The Italian side, including the squad, feel betrayed by the striker after he called both AC Milan and Juventus to discuss possible moves there this summer.
Inter’s management are particularly upset as the striker had been in constant contact with them, sending daily training reports and indicating all he wanted was a return. For them, it is a question of trust, and they have none in Lukaku now.
Some blame is being given to his mother, Adolphine, who ‘has a lot of influence’ over the Belgian and is believed to have been critical of Inter and Inzaghi behind the scenes.
Now Inter, and particularly President Steven Zhang, who had sanctioned a €40m deal, are no longer interested. They’re already hard at work looking for alternatives, leaving Lukaku to find another solution to get out of Chelsea. As far as they’re concerned, it’s bridges burned, relationship over.
