Lukaku on Saudi offer: I’m glad they’re interested in me

Romelu Lukaku has not had a good summer at all. He was unwanted at Chelsea, Inter might have taken him, but after the Belgian expressed his interest in Juventus, he became unwanted there as well. The Bianconeri fans did not want him in the team. Eventually, he landed at AS Roma, where he met Jose Mourinho again.

You could say that where the story almost began, it currently ends. After the transfer from Anderlecht to Chelsea, it was José Mourinho who didn’t count on the Belgian, so he sold him to Everton. We can only debate how much the missed penalty in the European Super Cup final against Bayern Munich affected that.

In three years at Everton, who paid just under €36 million for him, he scored an incredible 71 goals. The Belgian was the terror of the entire Premier League, all the big clubs not only in England wanted him, he was one of the hottest commodities on the market. In the summer of 2017, he chose Manchester United.

For almost 85 million euros, Jose Mourinho brought Lukaku into his team, the man who didn’t include him in his Chelsea selection years ago, now wants to start building on him. To start their time together, they lost 2-1 to Real Madrid in the European Super Cup, with Lukaku scoring the goal.

The Belgian capped the 2018/19 season with twenty-seven goals in fifty-one games. However, the main disappointment was the elimination from Sevilla in the Champions League eighth-finals.

The next season, however, the problems definitely started to show. Manchester United began to stumble and Lukaku did not perform quite ideally. Anyway, Mourinho was sacked in December 2018, with club icon Ole Gunnar Solskjær taking his place. Under Nora, the Belgian started to play on the wing, which he didn’t like at all, even though he shut out PSG in the Champions League eighth-finals with two goals at Parc des Princes.

A failed season and a less than ideal position in the line-up meant a move to Inter Milan. Manchester made €30 million from the striker’s departure. In the two seasons he spent in Italy he scored 64 goals and the biggest clubs in Europe started to take an interest in him again, especially Chelsea, where he also went.

In one season there he scored just 15 goals in 44 games. There were some problems again, so he headed to Inter again in the summer of 2022, this time on loan.

It wasn’t the same at the second attempt, with Lukaku’s endgame being particularly poor, and he didn’t score that many goals either. The Milan club showed no interest in a permanent transfer after the end of the loan spell. The Belgian didn’t know what to do next, Chelsea didn’t count on him, Inter didn’t want him, Juventus got in touch and made a mess of him.

Then, surprisingly, Al-Hilal got in touch, but the Saudi club was rejected. Lukaku has now commented on the whole situation: “I am happy for their interest, but after talking to them I was not convinced about the transfer. Al-Hilal is the biggest club in the Middle East, the Saudi Arabian league will become one of the best, but I wasn’t ready to leave Europe yet.“

The Belgian was eventually pointed to the Belgian by José Mourinho again, this time from the AS Roma bench. The renewed collaboration has so far been fully successful from Lukaku’s point of view, scoring seven goals in eight games. Unfortunately for both of them, the season hasn’t started the best for AS and so they have a lot to make up for. The next few games after the national break will tell if they will finish the season together.

Source: AS Roma, Fabrizio Romano