Inter have been described as ‘disappointed’ and ‘annoyed’ after being unable to contact Romelu Lukaku, despite finally agreeing a fee with Chelsea.
Lukaku and his representatives have been trying to engineer a permanent return to Inter after the Belgian’s loan spell back at the San Siro during the 2022/23 season, having spent one mutually unsatisfactory campaign at Chelsea.
Chelsea returned to pre-season this week but Lukaku was not present to report for his current employers as efforts are being made to address his future.
While all parties involved want to strike a deal, there had been an impasse over the fee. Chelsea are thought to have valued Lukaku – who they signed for a club-record £97.5m in August 2021 – at £40m, but Inter’s opening bids did not reach far beyond £25m.
But reports in Italy have suggested that a deal in excess of £30m has been put on the table by Inter, with Chelsea likely to accept.
There is a spanner in the works, however, as Lukaku has suddenly become unreachable to both clubs.
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Gianluca Di Marzio says the 30-year-old ‘is not responding either to the managers or to his former teammates’ and ‘his behavior in recent days has deeply disappointed the Nerazzurri club’.
Inter have been left ‘very embittered and annoyed by the attitude’ of the player, particularly after they ‘discovered an opening’ to Juventus, who Lukaku previously stated he would not be interested in playing for.
It is said that Juventus have offered the same package but their move for Lukaku is dependent on the sale of Dusan Vlahovic.
Despite the prior willingness to get a deal done, the volatile nature of the situation means that ‘it cannot be ruled out that Inter will decide to give up if Lukaku does not show a different sign in the coming hours’.
Further to those reports, Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport add that ‘part of Lukaku’s entourage cannot be found’ and ‘neither Chelsea nor Inter are able to get in touch with the man to whom the Belgian has entrusted the management of this negotiation’.
They name Belgian lawyer Sebastien Ledure as the individual responsible for the ‘confusion’, after ‘flirting with Juve’ and risking the move to Inter.
‘Nobody knows where he is now, because the phone rings empty,’ it is added of a man said to be exploiting Big Rom’s character weaknesses’ and ‘working for his personal gain’.
It’s delightfully pantomime stuff. Chelsea are scheduled to depart for the tour of the United States on July 17 and had hoped to reach a formal conclusion over Lukaku’s status by then but recent developments have made that unlikely.
