BELGIAN INTERNATIONAL ROMELU Lukaku gave his reason for rejecting Everton’s offer of a reported £140,000 a week because of a voodoo message, the Premier League club’s major shareholder Farhad Moshiri revealed on Tuesday.
Moshiri told fellow shareholders at the club’s AGM that the 24-year-old striker — who eventually joined Manchester United for £75 million instead of Chelsea, despite the Blues thinking they had secured his signature — looked set to sign the new contract until he made a phone call to his mother.
“We offered him a better deal than Chelsea and his agent came to Finch Farm [the club's training centre] to sign the contract,” said Moshiri. Robert [Elstone, chief executive] was there, everything was in place, there were a few reporters outside, then in the meeting Rom called his mother.
“He said he was on a pilgrimage in Africa or somewhere and he had a voodoo and got the message that he needs to go to Chelsea,” added the 62-year-old Iran-born businessman.
Moshiri, who has invested £150million of his own money into the club to clear debts, said he considered Lukaku’s departure was a personal failure for him.
“The issue with Romelu was not financial. As long as I am major shareholder financial issues are irrelevant,” said Moshiri “I wasted two summers to keep him: first summer with his agent, him and his family we managed to keep him.
“Last summer we offered him a better deal than Chelsea, whatever they offered we matched but he just didn’t want to stay. If I tell you what we offered him you wouldn’t believe it, but they offered him a better deal.
“I got close to Rom, I like the boy, he’s a good boy, and I used all my charm to keep him and I flatly failed,” Moshiri added.
