Signing a striker is often a landmark event, especially if they come with an existing reputation for their goalscoring ability.
In 2024, Roma are hoping Artem Dovbyk can become their new source of inspiration up front after arriving on the back of being the top La Liga scorer in 2023-24.
Over the years, Roma have previously welcomed in some other big names who had been the top scorer of a highly rated league before.
Here, Giallorossi Yorkshire looks at the players who have joined Roma after being the top scorer of the highest division in either Italy, England, France, Germany or Spain before.
This is only counting players who achieved those honours before – not during or after – their Roma careers, and is limited to those five countries (thus leaving out, for example, 2009-10 Belgian Pro League top scorer Romelu Lukaku).
Here are the 13 players who fit the criteria – some more than once!
Fulvio Bernardini
Top scorer: 1922-23 Prima Divisione
Joined Roma: 1928
When the Italian top tier was known as the Prima Divisione, divided into more regional categories, Fulvio Bernardini claimed the Capocannoniere award in 1922-23 with Lazio, with 24 goals.
Despite the identity of the first club he played before, Bernardini became a Roma legend after joining just ahead of their second season. The midfielder scored 10 league goals in his first season with Roma and 11 in his second, which was also the Italian top-flight’s first under the Serie A banner.
In total, Bernardini played for Roma for 11 years, also later having a spell as their head coach and eventually seeing the club’s training centre named after him.
Istvan Nyers
Top scorer: 1948-49 Serie A
Joined Roma: 1954
Istvan Nyers was an inspired signing for Inter in 1948, claiming the Capocannoniere award in his first season for 26 goals from 36 games. Interestingly, he actually scored more the following season (30) but was this time only the second-highest scorer in the league (you’ll see why next).
After winning two successive Scudetti with Inter in 1952-53 and 1953-54, Nyers joined Roma. An 11-goal campaign in Serie A followed, before the Hungarian got nine league goals in his second and final term with the club.
Gunnar Nordahl
Top scorer: 1949-50 Serie A, 1950-51 Serie A, 1952-53 Serie A, 1953-54 Serie A, 1954-55 Serie A
Joined Roma: 1956
Gunnar Nordahl is without doubt one of the greatest strikers in Serie A history, as seen by his records. Between 1949 and 1955, he was Serie A’s top scorer in five out of six seasons with Milan.
He was nearer the end of his career when he joined Roma in 1956, joining at the age of 34, but still scored 13 league goals in his first season with the club and later became their player-coach.
Antonio Valentin Angelillo
Top scorer: 1958-59 Serie A
Joined Roma: 1961
Brought to Italy by Inter in 1957, Argentine striker Antonio Valentin Angelillo was Serie A’s leading scorer in just his second season in Europe, with an astonishing goal-a-game record of 33 from 33.
Roma signed him after his fourth season in Milan and he subsequently hit double figures in the first of his four campaigns in the capital.
John Charles
Top scorer: 1956-57 First Division, 1957-58 Serie A
Joined Roma: 1962
Since the start of the Premier League era in 1992, Roma have never had a player who has top-scored in the English top-flight among their ranks. But historically speaking, they did have a one-time top scorer of the old English First Division.
That player was John Charles, who had spent his career up until 1956 in the Second Division with Leeds United until they earned promotion. Remarkably, he then scored 38 goals from 40 games in his first top-flight season.
A move to Serie A with Juventus immediately followed, and once again, Charles outscored everyone else in his league with 28 goals from 34 games. He spent five years in Turin, then after a less successful return to Leeds, the Wales international came back to Italy with Roma for a brief spell in the 1962-63 season, scoring four goals in 10 Serie A outings.
Roma players who also had a spell with a club in Yorkshire
Pierino Prati
Top scorer: 1967-68 Serie A
Joined Roma: 1973
Pierino Prati was best known for his iconic stint with AC Milan, which not only included the Capocannoniere prize for his 15 Serie A goals from 23 games in 1967-68 – his first season in their first team – but also a European Cup final hat-trick in 1969, a feat that hasn’t been replicated since.
In 1973, still only 26, he joined Roma to reunite with former Milan boss Nils Liedholm. In his debut season, he scored eight league goals, but in his second he scored a superior 14, putting him joint-third in the league’s top-scorers ranking.
Two further low-scoring seasons followed, but Prati had done enough to end up as Roma’s top scorer of the 1970s.
Remembering former Roma striker Pierino Prati
Francesco Graziani
Top scorer: 1976-77 Serie A
Joined Roma: 1983
After winning their second Scudetto, Roma added some more stars to their squad in the summer of 1983, such as midfielder Toninho Cerezo and striker Francesco Graziani.
Graziani was 30 years old at the time of his move and had already enjoyed a career in which he had won the World Cup with Italy in 1982, and been the Capocannoniere of Serie A in 1976-77, when he fired in 21 goals from 30 games for Torino.
Graziani lasted three years at Roma, but behind Roberto Pruzzo in the pecking order, his best ever goal tally for the club in a Serie A season was five.
Rudi Voller
Top scorer: 1982-83 Bundesliga
Joined Roma: 1987
While Roma were celebrating their second Scudetto by the summer of 1983, their future striker Rudi Voller had his own honour to be proud of after becoming the Bundesliga’s top scorer in his first season with Werder Bremen.
Voller scored 23 goals in 31 league games in Germany – not bad for a player who was in the second tier the year before – as his new side finished second on goal difference.
Four years later, he joined Roma. An underwhelming debut season was followed by some more consistent ones, most notably the 1990-91 campaign when he got 25 goals in all competitions, but he actually never broke the 15-goal barrier in a Serie A season.
Gabriel Batistuta
Top scorer: 1994-95 Serie A
Joined Roma: 2000
This striker needs no introductions whatsoever. Gabriel Batistuta became a Serie A legend over the course of the 1990s thanks to his exploits with Fiorentina. His best season with them was in 1994-95, when he scored 26 goals from 32 Serie A games.
With a Scudetto still evading him, though, Roma broke their transfer record to capture him in 2000 and his 20-goal haul – while not the leading tally in the league – was a huge help towards the title at the first time of asking in his new surroundings.
Shabani Nonda
Top scorer: 2002-03 Ligue 1
Joined Roma: 2005
Following a season as the top scorer in the Swiss top-flight, Shabani Nonda earned a move to France with Rennes in 1998. After two years there, he moved across the division to Monaco, where he would eventually record the highest-scoring season of his career with 26 goals from 35 league games in 2002-03 (the first season the French summit was known as Ligue 1).
Roma brought Nonda to Serie A in the summer of 2005 at the start of the Luciano Spalletti era, but it was on the back of a season in which he hadn’t scored any goals at all. For Roma, he scored four times in Serie A, but only lasted a season before being sent to Blackburn Rovers.
Luca Toni
Top scorer: 2005-06 Serie A, 2007-08 Bundesliga
Joined Roma: 2010
Only two players have ever won the European Golden Shoe and play for Roma. One, obviously, was Francesco Totti in the 2006-07 season. He was actually the second successive Italian to claim the prize; the season before, future Roma loanee Luca Toni outscored the rest of Europe while with Fiorentina.
Toni scored 31 goals in 38 Serie A games for La Viola in his debut season there. After another season, he headed abroad to join Bayern Munich, promptly becoming the Bundesliga top scorer (with 24 goals from 31 games) in 2007-08.
But his importance to Bayern began to fade, leading to a six-month loan return to Italy with a title-chasing Roma in 2010. Toni scored five goals from 15 Serie A games for the runners-up, but was not retained on a permanent basis.
Luca Toni and 11 other players who had a positive short-term impact at Roma
Edin Dzeko
Top scorer: 2009-10 Bundesliga
Joined Roma: 2015
Edin Dzeko won the Bundesliga with Wolfsburg in 2008-09, but they only finished eighth the season after. Nevertheless, the Bosnian striker was the German top-flight’s leading marksman in 2009-10 with 22 goals from 34 games.
Dzeko enhanced his reputation at Manchester City, despite never winning the Premier League golden boot, and was granted a heroic reception when Roma signed him in 2015.
Although his first season was characterised by missed chances, his second saw him become Serie A’s Capocannoniere with 29 goals from 37 games.
By the end of his Roma career, Dzeko was the club’s third highest scorer of all time.
Artem Dovbyk
Top scorer: 2023-24 La Liga
Joined Roma: 2024
While all the above strikers joined Roma in years after their top-scoring haul, Dovbyk has joined the club just months after. He is indeed the first player to be the reigning top scorer of a top European league to sign for the Giallorossi that same summer, directly after the season in which he got his golden boot.
Dovbyk won La Liga’s Pichichi Trophy by scoring a hat-trick for Girona – including a last-minute penalty that made him the outright winner – on the final day of the season in which they finished in the top four of the Spanish top flight for the first time.
In total, in his only season with Girona, Dovbyk scored 24 La Liga goals from 36 games. It meant he outranked Alexander Sorloth – another striker Roma were linked with before settling on the Ukraine international – to claim the same honour only otherwise won by Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Cristiano Ronaldo over the past decade.
Can he do the same in Serie A?
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