Romelu Lukaku ‘back home’ at Chelsea and finally feeling loved

12-Aug-2021 19:00:09 | The Guardian

Striker returns as potentially the missing piece in Tuchel’s jigsaw 10 years after he arrived for a spell that left him deflated

Fittingly, it was Didier Drogba who confirmed the news that most Chelsea fans had been hoping for. “He’s coming home,” wrote the former Ivory Coast striker at the weekend in a message on social media accompanied by nine blue love hearts.

Almost exactly a decade to the day since a fresh-faced teenager called Romelu Lukaku moved to Stamford Bridge for the first time for an initial £10m, the striker always tipped to follow in the footsteps of his boyhood idol is back in town after completing his transfer from Internazionale for almost 10 times that amount. It seemed inevitable that Lukaku – who has cost a record £289m in cumulative transfer fees – would one day return to the club he has described as “my first love”, despite rejecting the chance under Antonio Conte in 2017, and this time it finally seems to make sense.