Lukaku becoming Chelsea's forgotten man as they face Liverpool in League Cup final

It has been a tough week for some distinguished spectators in the Champions League. Luis Suarez, leading man in Atletico Madrid’s Liga-winning season in 2021, sat on the bench throughout the 1-1 draw with Manchester United that his team dominated. He watched an inspired Joao Felix, 13 years his junior, spearhead Atletico in his place.

A night earlier, Paulo Dybala sat out Juventus’s trip to Villarreal with injury. The game had barely started when Dusan Vlahovic, the 22-year-old new Juve recruit, marked his Champions League debut with a goal after less than 40 seconds.

The same night, there was no action at all at Stamford Bridge for 28-year-old Romelu Lukaku, an unused substitute during a 2-0 Chelsea win over Lille in which Kai Havertz, 22, scored a target-man’s goal and might have added two more.

If the feeling, as the first legs of the knockout stage concluded with teenager Anthony Elanga equalising Joao Felix’s excellent strike in Madrid, was of a subtle generational shift, the most compromised figure was not Suarez, or Dybala, or even an upstaged Cristiano Ronaldo, but Lukaku.

He is Chelsea’s most expensive signing, and returned only last summer to the club where, in his teens, he spent more time than he appreciated being marginalised.

The price of the ‘homecoming’, at supposedly his peak age, was more than €100m, to Internazionale. But he has reason to doubt how full a role he might have in the season’s first domestic final, Sunday’s League Cup showdown against Liverpool.

Thomas Tuchel, the Chelsea manager, described Lukaku as “not only physically but mentally tired” when reviewing his decision to line up Havertz, Christian Pulisic - who scored the second Chelsea goal - and Hakim Ziyech as his front three against