‘Lucky to have him’: Mateo Kovacic says he has a great understanding with ‘amazing’ Chelsea forward

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Mateo Kovacic described the strong connection he enjoys with Romelu Lukaku at Chelsea.

Speaking on the club’s YouTube channel, Kovacic explained how he and the Belgian international had developed a relationship from their initial meeting at Cobham.

Romelu reaching for company

From the outside watching in, it might be difficult to believe that Lukaku has formed any on-field friendships since re-joining the squad last summer.

In the past few months, the 28-year-old has struck a lonely figure upfront.

Very often, play simply passes him by, without even a hint of the others wanting to feed their expensive centre-forward.

His minimal involvement came to the forefront of everybody’s minds against Crystal Palace a few weekends back.

Across 90 minutes of action, Lukaku touched the ball just eight times, an unwanted Premier League record since Opta started collecting such statistics.

Thomas Tuchel recognised the number nine’s virtually zero contribution and benched him for the two follow-up fixtures.

In those games, Chelsea comfortably defeated Lille in the Champions League, then narrowly lost the relentless Carabao Cup final encounter with Liverpool.

Kovacic and Lukaku’s link up

Despite the side clearly playing better without a traditional striker, Lukaku has at least one person defending his corner.

“Yeah, from the first day I think we understand each other quite good because he holds up the game well,” said Kovacic.

“You can play one-twos with him well so, he’s an amazing striker and we are lucky to have him in our squad.”

At the beginning of the season, it seemed Chelsea had found an unlikely partnership to help propel them to a league title challenge.

Lukaku and Kovacic started six of the opening eight top-flight fixtures together, with the Blues winning five of those.

The latter’s injury in October meant the pair wouldn’t share a competitive arena again until Boxing Day.

It is perhaps this reason that Kovacic has only assisted Lukaku once in 22 matches; the reverse exchange hasn’t happened at all.

Whilst the former Inter Milan icon is out of the team, fans may have to wait a while until his and Kovacic’s affiliation sparks into life once more.

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