The agent of Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku has admitted it was difficult to get a move for his client this summer that made both the player and club happy due to the impact of the Saudi Pro League.
Clubs in Saudi Arabia have made quite a statement in recent months with signings such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mane, Riyad Mahrez, Roberto Firmino, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Ruben Neves and Gabri Veiga.
There are even more big names the Saudi clubs tried to sign, and Lukaku’s agent meant this made it hard for some European clubs to compete.
Lukaku ended up leaving Chelsea for a loan move to Roma, but Lukaku’s representative Sebastien Ledure has suggested that the Blues ideally wanted a permanent sale, though it would have been impossible for someone like Roma to compete with the kind of money they could offer.
In the end, they managed to find a temporary solution for Lukaku, who was clearly not too keen to jump on the Saudi bandwagon.
“It was very difficult, even impossible at the start of the transfer window, to talk about a loan solution,” Ledure told RTL.
“And what the owners of Chelsea were looking for was above all to find a definitive solution, a transaction, a transfer definitive. And the real change that happened this summer was the arrival of Saudi clubs on the international transfer market.
“They have set the bar so high in terms of the transfer compensation offered to European clubs and in this case to Chelsea, that it has become very difficult for European clubs to line up and therefore on the one hand, you have a club that is not opposed to a transfer.”
“On the other hand, they are going to seek the maximum transfer fee which obviously, in this case, it was only the Saudi clubs that could achieve such large amounts.”