Lukaku Wraps Roma Spell Early, Return Deemed Unlikely
Romelu Lukaku has likely played his final game with Roma and perhaps in Serie A altogether. He’ll be suspended for the season finale versus Empoli due to yellow-card accumulation. Despite his wish, the Giallorossi are unlikely to even try to bring him back from Chelsea, La Repubblica reported.
They’d have decent resources if they qualified for the Champions League. That hinges exclusively on Atalanta at this point. But they are expected to use them elsewhere rather than spend for a 31-year-old with a hefty valuation and wages. The Blues demand €43M for a permanent switch, which is too much for any Italian team.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport points out, Lukaku put up decent numbers with Roma, tallying 21 goals in 46 appearances, a lot more than in his previous two. He had the sixth most productive campaign of his career. However, he also failed to rise to the occasion in multiple crunch matches and had some untimely dry spells.
The Giallorossi paid €17M to have him considering the fee for the loan and his wages, €7.5M net and €11M gross. The suppression of the ‘Decreto Crescita’ is also a factor.
Our Take on Roma and Lukaku
It’s more likely than not that he won’t be back with them or Serie A in general, but the move seemed impossible at first the last time around too. Chelsea might get desperate and almost give him away at some point late in the summer. While no longer a star, he’s still serviceable.
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Rebuilding Roma’s Roster: Who Stays & Who Goes?
With a new manager and a new director in place (well, soon), it’s time for Roma to get serious about building a competitive and deep squad for Daniele De Rossi.
Typically, every spring, we rank and file Roma’s roster into tiers, separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were. However, after a tumultuous season that saw Roma replace manager José Mourinho with club legend Daniele De Rossi in mid-January and General Manager Tiago Pinto leave a few weeks later, a simple rank and file of the squad feels inadequate.
While De Rossi’s appointment was greeted with applause from the Roma faithful, many were skeptical that such an inexperienced manager could make hay out of an oddly constructed roster. DDR has suffered through ups and downs over the past few months, but the boy from Ostia has emerged as a legitimate up-and-coming manager, piloting Mourinho’s former men into the Europa League semifinals while remaining in the Champions League chase longer than the club probably deserved.
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There’s just one small problem: Roma’s roster is a mess. With players purchased by everyone from Monchi to Pinto, the squad is teeming with poor tactical fits, bloated salaries, and depreciating assets. That’s not to suggest that there aren’t pieces worth building around, but merely ranking the players into talent tiers feels insufficient; we need to separate the core of this team from its redundancies.
We’ve harped on this for years, but Roma needs to pick a lane and stay in it. If the Friedkin family is genuinely committed to Daniele De Rossi on the touchline and Florent Ghisolfi in the boardroom, they need to give this pairing sufficient time, space, and funds to truly implement their vision.
