Luke Shaw jokingly mocked former Manchester United teammate Romelu Lukaku following Inter’s Champions League exit on Tuesday.
Inter suffered a 2-1 defeat by Barcelona at the San Siro and ultimately finished third in Group F, having failed to match Borussia Dortmund’s result in matchday six – a 2-1 home win over Slavia Prague.
The disappointing result means the Italians will be playing in the Europa League for the rest of the season, and they’ve now failed to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League since 2011/12.
Lukaku was guilty of wasting several opportunities to score and Shaw, who played alongside the Belgium forward at Manchester United, wasted no time in poking some harmless fun at the striker.
Back in October, Lukaku tweeted a picture of himself smiling in training with the caption ‘UCL’ and a smiling face emoji.
Having waited for the perfect moment – over a month after Lukaku’s tweet was first sent – Shaw went back to find the post and quote tweeted it with the reply: ‘Welcome back.
He added a wink emoji and has seen the tweet liked over 170,000 times in around 12 hours.
It was a measure of revenge for the left-back, who was said to be unhappy when Lukaku leaked United’s speed test statistics during training in the summer.
United will be back in Europa League action on Thursday as they host AZ Alkmaar and may very well end up facing Inter at some point in the future.
After the match, Antonio Conte said his Inter side have to remain positive despite their European frustrations.
“The disappointment remains,” said Conte. “It is a pity because in the end I think we deserved more. We had to do better with all the chances we had. Football is a very simple game and you have to score if you want to win.
“Between this match and the match against Roma, we were not very clinical in front of goal and we paid for it against Barcelona.
“I saw great disappointment in the eyes of the boys and I am also feeling sorry for our fans because they made an incredible atmosphere from the first to the last second.
“We have to think positively because this is a group of serious guys. We are working seriously, with a sense of belonging, joy and the desire to defend these colours and I think this can be noticed on the field.”
