Antonio Conte leaving Inter Milan; Romelu Lukaku to follow?

Antonio Conte is leaving Inter Milan just days after leading them to a long awaited Scudetto. While the news is not quite official, it’s surely just a matter of working through all the red tape, and getting the payoff figured out which is reportedly half of his salary.

So after two years at the Nerazzurri, Conte will once again be looking for a new job, though this time, the departure looks to have been on his own terms with Inter looking to shed salary in order to stay afloat in these trying economic times.

Conte has been linked with the Spurs vacancy, but hopefully that won’t be something we’ll have to deal with. If there’s anyone who can drag Spurs up to a high level, it’s Conte, though whether they’d match his ambitions after getting burned by the Mourinho experience, that’s another question.

More pertinently for us, Conte’s departure will add plenty of lighter fluid to the Romelu Lukaku return rumors, with previous stories already linking their fates — i.e. Conte leaving is a requirement for Lukaku being willing to leave as well. With Inter looking to cut costs, selling their leading goalscorer in the prime of his career would certainly be an impactful way to do so.

The obvious choice then for Lukaku would be Chelsea, just as an obvious choice for Chelsea to fix our finishing woes in front of goal would be Lukaku. We may have let him go once, but we can fix that mistake — at a cost, but fix it we could. Amid silly stories of Eden Hazard or Willian returning, here’s one that would actually make sense.