I want trophies not personal accolades
Lukaku back where he feels he belongs
ON the day Chelsea announced Romelu Lukaku’s return, his first senior club Anderlecht released some old footage of the striker stepping out into the stands at Stamford Bridge.
He was a young boy then, more hair, his eyes wider. He wore a Chelsea shirt under his zip-up jacket. Didier Drogba’s name printed on the back.
‘I have to sit alone,’ he said to his friend. ‘I have to enjoy this moment on my own.’
Looking out over the pitch, Lukaku puffed out his cheeks and shook his head, as if making sure it was not some cruel mirage.
The group leader tells the young Lukaku he has to return to join the group. You can dream as much as you want later, he says.
‘Dream? I’m not dreaming,’ replied Lukaku. One day he will play here, he insists, and when he does that will be the only time his family will see him cry.
There were no tears this time around, just smiles, as Chelsea’s new record signing was unveiled at Stamford Bridge a decade after he first joined the club, arriving for just shy of £100million from Inter Milan.
He laughs when reminded of his first visit all those years ago. What is it about the club that sparks
such emotion? ‘When you have supported a team since you were 10 years old and you get the opportunity to play for them, that was really it for me. There are people who like Real Madrid, people who like Barcelona, people who like Inter Milan. I like Chelsea. For me, that was it. That was the thing that I worked for. Now I am here, I am very happy.’
Thomas Tuchel is very happy too. He’s got his man, a world-class striker, the missing piece. It sounds odd, perhaps, that a team that won the Champions League should be missing anything but it was the absence of such a player that held them back in the pursuit of domestic glory.
Lukaku is fit to face Arsenal this afternoon. We will see just how much of an impact he will have.
His first shot at playing for the club he supported ended in disappointment. Loan moves to West Brom and Everton followed by a permanent move to Goodison in 2014. It hurt Lukaku.
Since his return, he has admitted that for years he asked himself what he had done wrong. He moved to Manchester United, this time for £75m, only to be sold to Inter Milan after two seasons. It was there, under former Blues
boss Antonio Conte, that Lukaku transformed his game.
He was miscast as a target man at Old Trafford. Lukaku is much more adept at using his speed, strength and technical ability to run at and past defenders. At Inter, Conte told him he had to learn to play with his back to goal otherwise he would be out of the side.
He returns to Chelsea the complete striker. He holds the ball up. He links up play. He scores from distance. He’s lethal inside the box. He’s added creativity to his game too, with 11 assists last season alongside strike partner Lautaro Martinez.
The hope for Tuchel is not just that Lukaku scores goals. The German also believes Lukaku can get the best out of Timo Werner.
Werner knows only too well what it’s like to arrive at Stamford Bridge carrying the burden of cost and expectation. He mustered just six goals in the Premier League, missed many opportunities for more.
Tuchel believes Werner, who thrived in a two-striker system at Leipzig, will benefit from the spotlight pointed in a different direction. ‘I truly believe that this can be a big upgrade for him (Werner),’ said Tuchel.
‘Having the attention on Romelu, who likes to be in the centre of the pitch and to fight physically with defenders, can create space for
Timo. He can play a bit wider than he used to play for us last season.
‘And to play around Romelu, who is like the reference as a No9 and in the attack, he hopefully gives Timo the freedom and the space to play around him and to feel that it’s easier to find more dangerous spaces and start scoring again.’
If Lukaku and Werner both start firing, it could be a long day for Arsenal and their new £50m defender Ben White, who endured a torrid time against physical Brentford striker Ivan Toney in their opening-day defeat.
For Lukaku , regardless of what went before, this is where he feels he belongs. This is where he wanted to come and this is where he wants to stay.
‘I think this is the right time and the right place for me,’ he says. ‘Now, I just want to let my work do the talking on the pitch. I will try to achieve as much as possible throughout these years.
‘I’ve never been a guy who talks about personal ambitions and things like that. I don’t talk about individual records and numbers because that’s not me. All I’m interested in talking about is winning.’
If that’s the case, you get the feeling we might be hearing him quite a lot this season.