Inter Milan striker Romelu Lukaku had been taking subtle swipes at his former employer, Manchester United, softly sparking a flame to the bridge behind him. Then Big Rom went on the LightHearted podcast, and absolutely dropped a nuclear bomb on that bridge.
Lukaku said that he, along with fellow forward Alexis Sanchez and midfielder Paul Pogba, were unjustly scapegoated for United’s inability to get results.
“They have to find somebody [to blame]. Either it’s Pogba, me or Alexis,” the Belgian said on the pod.
“It’s always the three of us. So, for me, I just see it in many ways: a lot of people don’t think I should be part of that system, that’s my feeling. The conversations that I have, I just know. What makes me laugh is: how is shit going bad with my team but, with my national team it’s good?”
Lukaku does make a good point about how he’s excelling with the Belgian national team, but flopped at United. Of course, he was also the second most expensive transfer acquisition in United’s history when he moved over from Everton in 2017. Number one is one of the players he mentioned, Pogba, and the other name he dropped, Alexis, is the highest salaried player in the history of the club.
Sanchez is on the verge of joining the Belgian at Inter, with United prepared to even pay him handsomely not to play for them.
With massive wages comes massive expectations, and that creates pressure which simply comes with the territory. If you want to work an extremely high profile job, and get paid astronomically to do so, then you must have a thicker skin than this to deal with criticism.
Lukaku wasn’t done hitting out at Old Trafford though. He also claims that he wasn’t interested in leaving the club, until transfer rumors about him started swirling, and MUFC did absolutely nothing to try and discredit those rumors. Lukaku said the failure to publicly protect him, then led to his wanting to leave.
That’s not entirely true though, as Lukaku did openly pine for a move to Italy last season.
“A lot of stuff was said: ‘Rom’s going to go there, the coach doesn’t need him anymore, they want to sell him. That was about for a good three or four weeks,” Lukaku said.
“I’m waiting for somebody to come out and shut it down. It didn’t happen, and then I had my conversation and I told him what I said.”
“I told him it’s better to go our separate ways, because if you guys don’t want to protect somebody but you guys say you want to keep him, if all the rumours come out — I just wanted a bit of protection.”
“It never happened. All I heard was: ‘He’s got to go, he doesn’t deserve to be there blah blah blah.’ If it’s like that so be it, I want to go now.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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