Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has joked that the key to Romelu Lukaku's success at Stamford Bridge will be working hard in training...and not giving any more interviews.
The Belgian sent shockwaves around Chelsea, and indeed Europe, by going out of his way to conduct a sit-down interview in which he confessed his frustration towards his situation at the club and discussed a desire to return to Inter in the not-too-distant future - comments which are open to interpretation.
While it's now accepted that Lukaku meant no harm from the interview and was simply trying to apologise to Inter fans, supporters have been less than impressed and Tuchel has admitted to being disappointed by the striker's actions.
It's clear that Tuchel is getting a bit tired of discussing this whole thing, and when he was asked about getting the best out of Lukaku going forward, he gave a brilliant answer.
"Training, training, playing. Training, playing, training, sleeping, eating good, training, playing, sleeping, eat good, drink a lot of water, sleep, train and don’t give interviews," he said (via football.london).
A lot of the confusion surrounding this interview is the fact that it was conducted three weeks ago. Since then, Lukaku has done other interviews in which he has discussed conversations with Tuchel, and the whole thing has left Chelsea fans uncertain as to the true strength of their relationship.
“This is exactly the problem we have out of it because you have a quote from another match in another direction and he says he had a chat with me, and then the suggestion comes and it seems the chat was about how he was not happy how we used him," Tuchel continued after being relentlessly pressed on the situation.
"But maybe that was not the chat and we have chats with a lot of players, how we want them to have in position, where they should be when we arrive in certain spaces. This is absolutely a super-normal chat and we have it with Romelu.
"We have a discussion now where it seems that he was on the bench and we benched him because other players suited our style of playing better. Romelu played when he came, then he got injured, then he caught Covid and when he came back from Covid, he played with no training in Aston Villa and with further no training here, that’s why I’m surprised and I don't enter in these discussions and like ‘oh, there is something going on’ because there is absolutely zero going on.
"That’s why I don’t need to understand why he did it. It does not make it better, but that is my situation. And I will not enter in finding reasons now to understand the interview, I don’t want to because I don’t have to and I don’t have a reason.
"I don’t go now into chats and think ‘did he mean it the other way?’ We have zero problem and, ok, he gave an interview so maybe he has a problem so he needs to speak up. I don’t have one.”
Source : 90min