Carabao Cup 2021-22: Chelsea manager Tuchel confirms Lukaku apologised; to play semis against Tottenham

It has been a turbulent week for Chelsea’s striker Romelu Lukaku. He was in the headlines for having made some controversial comments against the club and being unhappy, while he added that he missed his former club Inter Milan. As a result, Chelsea head coach Thomas Tuchel did not take the Belgian’s comments to Sky Italia on a good note and dropped him for the English Premier League (EPL) game against Liverpool last weekend. Also, doubts cast on his appearance in Wednesday’s Carabao Cup semis against Tottenham Hotspur.

However, during the pre-match press conference on Tuesday, Tuchel clarified that Lukakau had apologised. Thus, it opened the doors for the Belgian’s return to the Chelsea squad for the EFL Cup semis. Earlier, after the Liverpool game on Sunday that ended in a hard-fought 2-2 draw, Tuchel had stated that he would hold talks with Lukaku over his recent comments while he ruled out putting the striker up for sale.

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“First of all, we were even in the background happy that we took the time that it needed to look calmly on it and talk calmly. He apologised and is back in the squad for training. For me, the most important thing was to understand and clearly understand and believe that it was not intentional. He did not do this intentionally to create noise in front of such a big game. And, it’s the very first time even he has behaved like this,” said Tuchel during the pre-match interview, reports The Guardian.

Lukaku’s comment on being unhappy raised questions on Tuchel’s style of managing the players. However, the German manager cleared that air, stating that it was not a big deal, but not small either. Yet, he was happy with the Belgian’s apology to move on, besides clarifying that Lukakau had realised his mistake and the mess he created while he vouched for cleaning it up.

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“Maybe, we will have a bit of smell still from it, of course. He can handle it, but he also has no other choice. He cannot expect everybody to be super happy the very next day. But, he’s still our player, and we have good, good reasons and a lot of reasons to make him play for us, and to convince him and to fight hard that he’s our player. We’re happy he’s our player. We will protect him,” Tuchel concluded.