Romelu Lukaku to Juventus? With him, in a transfer window, anything can happen

To Mauricio Pochettino, there was no reclamation project as far as Romelu Lukaku was concerned. A fresh start for Chelsea’s €115million striker did not figure in the plans of their new head coach.

“I think it is obvious,” Pochettino said. “I think we can repeat this. It is obvious what is going on with him.”

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For a time it certainly looked that way, but are things ever really that straightforward with Lukaku? This has been another summer of Romfusion and great unexpectations. The answer Pochettino thought was “obvious” presumably rested on the assumption Chelsea and Inter Milan would find a solution for Lukaku to move back to San Siro on a permanent basis.

“He loves the shirt he wears,” Inter’s chief executive, Giuseppe Marotta, claimed towards the end of last season. Selling Andre Onana, a playmaker in gloves, to Manchester United for €55million (£47.5m; $60.7m) was part of a strategy to raise the money needed to turn Lukaku’s 2022-23 loan into a permanent signing back at the club he left for Chelsea in 2021. Inter elected not to extend the contract of veteran striker Edin Dzeko, whose representatives concluded a free transfer to local side Fenerbache while he prepared for June’s Champions League final against Manchester City in Istanbul. It was a sign of their intent.

Although Inter’s coach, Simone Inzaghi, showed a preference for Dzeko in big games — the Bosnian started the Coppa Italia final, the Super Cup, the Milan derbies in the league and every Champions League knockout tie — the future at Inter looked like a consolidated reunion of LuLa (the Lukaku-Lautaro Martinez partnership), which is synonymous with the club’s most recent Scudetto in 2020. During the run-in this spring, as Inter won seven of their