Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s incendiary feud with Lukaku set for a second act

Zlatan Ibrahimovic was already annoyed with Romelu Lukaku, believing that his one-time Manchester United teammate and now Serie A rival had tried to present himself as the new king of their domain. It was October 2020, Ibrahimovic was in the red-and-black of Milan, Lukaku the blue-and-black of Internazionale and the former had drawn first blood in the first Milan derby of the 2020-21 season, scoring twice in a 2-1 win. “Milan has never had a king, just a god,” Ibrahimovic tweeted, in trademark self-effacing style.

It was never going to take much for tempers to flare when next they met. The way that Ibrahimovic tells it in his new book, Adrenaline: My Untold Stories, it is unapologetically his side of the story. It started when Lukaku argued with Alexis Saelemaekers, the young Milan midfielder, in the 45th minute of last January’s Coppa Italia quarter-final at San Siro.

Ibrahimovic, as his team’s leader and senior professional, knew that he had to step in and he told Lukaku to pipe down. “What’ll you do if I don’t?” Lukaku replied. “I’m going to break every bone in your body if you open your mouth,” Ibrahimovic said.

It was on, the players bumping heads and trading insults, with Ibrahimovic, in his words, going for Lukaku’s achilles heel. “Go tell your mother to do a voodoo spell for you,” he shouted.

After Lukaku had left Everton in 2017 for United, having initially wanted to join Chelsea, it was said by Farhad Moshiri, Everton’s majority shareholder, that the player did so after receiving a voodoo message. Moshiri inferred that Lukaku’s mother had encouraged him to take the advice. Lukaku has hotly denied this.

According to the Swede, Lukaku saw red as the players headed for the interval and yelled at him from a