We expected him to at least go up to the game but not even. Romelu Lukaku therefore remained 90 minutes to observe his teammates win against Lille in the knockout stages of the Champions League (2-0). Four days after the famous match with 7 touches of the ball against Crystal Palace, it is a new blow for Big Rom, especially since it is the one who took his place in attack, Kai Havertz, who scored the first Blues goal. What did not fail to raise the English press. “Who needs Lukaku?” Launches the Daily Mail as a provocation. “Havertz shows Lukaku how to do it,” said The Times.
The Guardian notes for its part how Timo Werner, who came on the game in the 80th minute, only needed eight short minutes to touch the ball 7 times… “What is striking is how Lukaku has been out of step with the rest of the team in recent days,” writes the British daily. “Pulisic and Havertz worked like Trojan horses, running around and plugging every hole for the team.”
The newspaper hails Chelsea’s fine collective performance, without their number 9. “Tuchel can pretend to be slightly surprised by Lukaku’s 7 touches against Crystal Palace but he sees all of this. Just as he must also see his own inability to change the script of the story and get more from a player bought for 115 million euros. Leaving Lukaku on the bench was very rough, but justified. Chelsea will no doubt continue to build on this…”
“Havertz scores goals that Lukaku dreams of scoring”
On the side of Sky Sports, we also easily recognized how much Kai Havertz’s performance had completely made Lukaku forget. “It’s time to think of him as a real 9, and more like a false 9. (…) He scores goals that all strikers dream of scoring, including Lukaku. Halfway through the first period, he had already touched the ball 15 times.” But this does not mean that the Belgian striker should be buried according to Sky Sports. “We have to salute Havertz because it’s far too easy to suggest that Lukaku is overrated. We’re still talking about a player who was voted Serie A Player of the Year, who has more than 100 caps for his country and who has scored an average of 23 goals per season for a decade.”
“The truth is that Lukaku came to a club that did not expect him,” concludes Sky Sports, after a comparison with his performance at Inter, with supporting figures. “He arrived at a club that evolved without him and to solve a problem that didn’t exist for everyone.”
