Former Manchester United striker Romelu Lukaku revealed what was going wrong with him at Old Trafford.
Lukaku joined United in 2017 for a deal worth £74m. He scored 26 goals across all competitions in his debut season earning a second-placed finished in the Premier League.
Things didn’t go well in the 2018-19 season as his ability to burn pace and first-touch was highlighted a lot by football fans across Europe.
After Jose Mourinho was sacked mid-season, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer arrived at the club. The baby-faced-assassin started to prefer the dynamic duo of Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial over the Belgian.
Things went south quickly and Lukaku reveals how [via The Times]:
“A year ago, when I was in England, I was ‘lazy, I didn’t run, I didn’t do this and that’. Here, they call me the hardest worker in the room,” Lukaku says. “If you look at me playing here and there, I mean, there are improvements, yeah, but the [same] Rom is still here.
“From the first friendly game when I played against LA Galaxy, from that first game it was always ‘Yes, but…’,” he says. “Everybody in the club was so nice, from Ed Woodward to the owners, to Matthew Judge [transfer negotiator], to Jose Mourinho, to Ole [Gunnar Solskjaer] and his staff, to everybody in the canteen. They were so nice. But the stuff around it was just too much of a negative spiral for me.
“They will call me slow and I’m like, ‘Slow? Me, slow? I cannot keep up with the fast pace game of Man U? There were too many little things where I thought this is not right. If you call me slow I would not score a goal like I scored the second against Shakhtar Donetsk in the [Europa League] semi-final.
“If I was slow I would not have got the penalty like I did against Seville in the final. That’s two years after. Are you going to say me at 27 is faster than I was at 25? That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s just little things. I was like, you know what? Eff this. I’m out.”
Lukaku joined Inter Milan last season for £73m. He was later joined by former teammates Alexis Sanchez and Ashley Young.
Lukaku went on to further praise his current manager Antonio Conte and remarks that he’s helped him to take him to the next level.
The Belgian international also revels how he nearly signed for Chelsea in 2017 but Paul Pogba made a vital role in convincing him to join the Red Devils.
Lukaku ends by saying that Mourinho is a very staright-forward manager and he never had any problem with him.
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