Belgian football star Romelu Lukaku moved from hero to villain in the Europa League final against Sevilla in which his own goal punished Inter Milan. The former Manchester United star was hoping that he would end his debut season with Inter Milan on a glorious note, but he and his teammates were defeated. Lukaku scored the first goal of the game for Inter Milan via a penalty within five minutes, and the thoughts of all Inter fans was that their team would win.
While the Belgian has enjoyed a superb debut season with Inter after scoring 34 goals across all competitions, his campaign did end on a sour note in Germany. The Mirror has now reported that Lukaku snubbed the chance to collect a silver medal with his teammates after his own goal cost the side their first trophy in a decade. Lukaku put his foot out to try and block an overhead kick from Diego Carlos, unaware that it was going wide. However, his touch changed the ball’s path back goal-wards and left goalkeeper Samir Handanovic helpless to try and stop it.
Football pundit Jamie Carragher, however, felt that Lukaku was in the wrong for the medal snub. While on duty with CBS Sports, the ex-Liverpool man said:
“Yes, but it’s easy for us to sit here and say that. In a perfect world, everyone goes up and shows sportsmanship. When you want something so badly and you want to win, and also he’s played a small part in the winning goal at the wrong end, you can react badly to it. To be honest, if he was one of my team-mates, would I be too bothered? I wouldn’t care to be honest. He’s obviously taken the defeat really badly. As long as he’s shaking hands with the opposition and showed respect to the opposition players, I think that’s really important. Obviously, we’ve been in both situations at times with players. If he doesn’t want to collect his medal, someone will give it to him.”
