Romelu Lukaku supposedly intervened to stop Jeremy Doku leaving Anderlecht for a transfer to Chelsea when he was still a teenager.
Doku, still only 21 years of age, has long been regarded as a real wonderkid, and had attracted interest from big clubs such as Chelsea when he was around 15.
Still, it seems Lukaku did his bit to convince Doku to stay at Anderlecht for a bit longer, according to their academy director Jean Kindermans.
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, as quoted by the Evening Standard, Kindermans revealed Lukaku’s role in having a direct chat with Doku to talk him out of a move to Stamford Bridge.
“I remember taking Romelu into my office about the problem of getting young players to commit to us – Doku in particular,” Kindermans said.
“Romelu replied, ‘Come on, pass your phone to me, I’m going to call him’.
“But I didn’t want to do that because a phone call gets quickly forgotten. So, instead, I got Romelu to convince Jeremy to stay.
“I still have the video on my phone. On it, you can hear Romelu giving advice to the Doku family, saying ‘Hey, guys, stay with Anderlecht for a while, you’re good’ and so on.”
Doku recently joined Manchester City from Rennes, and it’s fair to say there’ll probably be a few Chelsea fans who aren’t best pleased that Lukaku stopped them getting him when it seems there was a genuine chance.
Lukaku has had two disappointing spells with CFC, first as a youngster and then his current spell, which has seen him go out on loan twice.