2025-10-17 13:34:48
Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne lining up for the Belgium national team (Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)
Chelsea fans will no doubt have bad memories of Romelu Lukaku in his recent second spell with the club which had promised so much.
The Belgium international has had a great career overall, even if there have been some ups and downs in there along the way.
Lukaku first burst onto the scene as a real wonderkid at Anderlecht, and ended up joining Chelsea as a teenager in his first spell.
He then impressed on loan at West Brom, but couldn’t break into the Chelsea team before eventually joining Everton.
From there, he later joined Manchester United for big money, but struggled before being offloaded to Inter Milan.
Romelu Lukaku’s agent on his second spell at Chelsea
Lukaku once again revived his career with some fine form at Inter, and this prompted Chelsea to bring him back to Stamford Bridge in a big-money deal.
Although many Chelsea fans’ current focus will be on how to buy tickets for Chelsea vs Ajax in the Champions League, they may also be interested to hear Lukaku’s agent’s insights into what went wrong for his client at Stamford Bridge.
Discussing that time, Federico Pastorello said: “It was the right decision at the time. Then there are the human variables; no one could have predicted Lukaku’s difficulties, perhaps not so much environmental ones, because he knew the club, but rather in his relationship with the coach.
“He came from an almost father-son relationship with (Antonio) Conte, and that difference in approach affected him in some way, along with the injury he suffered. If it hadn’t been for that, the story would have been different.”
Chelsea set for Romelu Lukaku reunion
Chelsea will actually come up against Lukaku’s Napoli side later on in the Champions League league phase.
The Blues take on Ajax next as they look to improve after a slightly patchy start on their return to the competition this season.
Chelsea were beaten comfortably by Bayern Munich in their first game, and only scraped past Benfica at home in their second fixture.
This is not quite the kind of Chelsea team we’ve become used to seeing at this level, with the west Londoners previously having more experience names in their squad when they won the trophy in 2012 and 2021.
Enzo Maresca’s youthful side are improving all the time, though, so it will be interesting to see how they cope against opponents such as Ajax and Napoli and if they can get through to the knockout stages.
