At this point, Romelu Lukaku is firmly stuck in limbo between Chelsea and an unknown destination, which will not be Inter Milan.
The striker appears to have burned all bridges after news that he spoke to Juventus came out, leaving the door open for a move to Turin, who cannot afford him unless they sell Dusan Vlahovic.
That isn’t a guarantee in itself, and the Chelsea player’s situation is covered by Gazzetta dello Sport on Wednesday, who look at how players, and humans in general, often say things they later turn their back on.
For Lukaku, it was his promise that he would never play for an Italian team other than Inter, saying at the time of his first transfer there that he told Manchester United he would have turned down Juventus even if their offer was bigger than Nerazzurri’s.
At this point, Gazzetta point out there is ‘no scandal’, and even the news that the Belgian held a phone call with a ‘Nerazzurri ultras leader a couple of days ago’ means very little.
He reportedly reiterated his ‘never ever’ about a move to Juventus, seemingly in an appeal to smooth matters over, but the Italian newspaper describe the Chelsea player’s attempt as similar to ‘the justification of the husband who comes home at night and is discovered by his wife with lipstick on his shirt’.
That’s because any person would ‘want to justify the flirtation’, but fans will often consider this as going ‘into the slimy and poisonous territory of treacherous stabbing’, despite attempts to ‘invoke concepts such as loyalty, gratitude and trust’.
It’s this ‘inability to fully bond with a club and keep his word’ that has caused him struggles to date in his career, and why there is now a ‘never never’ from the Inter Milan fans of a return to the club for Lukaku.
He’s burned all bridges, and now needs to figure out what his future will look like, currently having to train at Cobham while the rest of Mauricio Pochettino’s squad are abroad.
