Excitement surrounds Roma as they close in on completing the signing of Matias Soule, one of the best young players in Serie A.
Soule spent the 2023-24 season on loan at Frosinone from Juventus and was a revelation, scoring 11 goals in 39 games.
Roma are thrilled to be signing the 21-year-old, who will be hoping to maximise his potential in his new surroundings.
The club’s new decision makers have a sharp eye on the future and Soule should become a cornerstone of their new project.
But how have the last 10 players aged 21 or under to join Roma from another Serie A side fared?
2024 – Tommaso Baldanzi (20)
Embed from Getty ImagesAlthough the last signing of the Jose Mourinho era was a teenager in the shape of Dean Huijsen (not included here as he was purely a loan reinforcement), many of the new players welcomed by the club over that two-and-a-half-year timeframe were more experienced campaigners.
Thus, it was a clear signal of the new direction Daniele De Rossi’s Roma were taking when they secured the deadline-day signing of Tommaso Baldanzi in February 2024.
Aged 20 at the time, the attacking midfielder was one of the brightest prospects in his position among Serie A’s bottom-half clubs.
Roma’s faith in Baldanzi was evident from the fee they paid Empoli for his services, which was their largest in a few years. To start with, though, Baldanzi would have to make do with being a deputy for Roma’s biggest star, Paulo Dybala – and the addition of Soule could complicate his pathway to regular starts even further.
2020 – Marash Kumbulla (20)
After coming through the system at Hellas Verona and establishing himself in Serie A by the 2019-20 season, Marash Kumbulla was a defender in demand. Ultimately, despite it being a bit of a limbo period in terms of who was driving Roma’s transfer decisions of the time, he came to the capital in September 2020 on loan with an obligation to buy, with Mert Cetin (then 23) moving the other way.
Despite a decent early impression, Kumbulla struggled to match his potential at Roma and was rarely first choice in his position. Some time on loan at Sassuolo followed in early 2024 before a potential reintegration or sale.
2020 – Roger Ibanez (21)
One of the defenders who stood in Kumbulla’s way of regular starts for Roma was the once-revelatory Roger Ibanez, who had joined on loan from Atalanta at the age of 21 in the previous transfer window.
Ibanez only had one Serie A appearance to his name at the time, but when Paulo Fonseca switched to a back three, he eventually earned his place and clung onto it. Although sometimes prone to a calamitous error, Ibanez was usually an aggressive ball-winner.
The Brazilian featured prominently the following season before his move became permanent and he spent another two years with the club, starting the final of the 2021-22 Europa Conference League (which Roma won) and the 2022-23 Europa League (which Roma lost on penalties, with Ibanez being one of the courageous souls to take a spot kick even after giving every sinew of energy in his performance).
That was the end of Ibanez’s journey with the club, since he was then sold to Saudi Pro League side Al-Ahli.
2019 – Amadou Diawara (21)
As part of Roma’s sale of Kostas Manolas in 2019, they signed Amadou Diawara from Napoli as a counterpart.
Despite his tender years, Diawara had already been playing in Serie A for four seasons, although the first of those (with Bologna) was busier than this three with Napoli.
While he started out reasonably well, certain mistakes and injuries didn’t help his cause at Roma, as Diawara only managed to make 66 appearances across three seasons before leaving for Anderlecht.
2018 – Nicolo Zaniolo (18)
Embed from Getty ImagesThe average Roma fan knew very little of Nicolo Zaniolo when he joined the club in 2018 as part of the sale of Radja Nainggolan to Inter. He wasn’t even believed to be Monchi’s first choice of young counterpart, but headed Roma’s way for an assigned value of under €5m.
Despite the disappointment of losing Nainggolan, those unknowing Roma fans soon warmed to Zaniolo, who surpassed even the club’s expectations to make his mark already in his first season. The fact that his debut came against Real Madrid was a precursor to how big dreams of Zaniolo’s potential would, for a time, be.
Starring either as a midfielder or winger, Zaniolo quickly outlined himself as one of Italy’s best blossoming talents. A pair of ACL injuries, though, lowered his ceiling.
Nonetheless, Zaniolo scored the winner for Roma in the Europa Conference League final, although his legacy soured slightly with the manner of his exit from the club in 2023.
2017 – Patrick Schick (21)
After a breakout season with Sampdoria, Patrik Schick was on course for a move to Juventus until an issue was detected in his medical and a reassured Roma hijacked the deal.
Despite Schick’s potential, it was a strange piece of business, given that Roma were committing to a club-record fee when they still had Edin Dzeko in his prime up front, which meant Eusebio Di Francesco would often have to play his new recruit on the wing instead.
Schick struggled for goals at Roma and suffered from the pressure of his price tag, eventually being sold to Bayer Leverkusen, where he would fulfil his potential after all.
2017 – Lorenzo Pellegrini (21)
There have been some cases recently of Roma failing to activate buyback clauses for academy products who have gone on to excel elsewhere – such as Riccardo Calafiori, now a €50m Premier League-bound defender, and Davide Frattesi, who never even played for the first team – but one they did successfully bring back was Lorenzo Pellegrini.
After two years with Sassuolo, the former Primavera captain came back to his boyhood club in 2017. A few years later, he would be Roma’s captain at senior level too, and ultimately the man to lift their first ever UEFA trophy.
Pellegrini’s return to Roma has included some highs and lows, including niggling injuries more recently, and he has divided opinion within the fanbase, but his numbers and achievements are firmly up there compared to some other icons who came before him.
With more than 50 goals and 50 assists for his beloved club, Pellegrini has made some memorable contributions.
2014 – Juan Manuel Iturbe (21)
Embed from Getty ImagesRoma will be hoping Juan Manuel Iturbe isn’t a cautionary tale for the latest young signings they get excited about. Back in 2014, the former Porto winger was emerging from a successful debut Serie A season with Hellas Verona, which led to him attracting interest from the division’s leading clubs.
Roma won the race for the coveted talent, forking out their fourth biggest transfer investment ever for the then-21-year-old, but he struggled to live up to expectations. Whereas he had scored eight goals in his first Serie A season with Verona, he only ever scored three for Roma across two-and-a-half seasons (although one was in a crucial derby win, the one more famous for Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa’s winner to seal Champions League qualification at Lazio’s expense).
It ultimately transpired that Iturbe struggled through injury during his formative time at Roma and some perhaps unwise decisions on the course of recovery didn’t help him get back to where the club had envisaged him being.
2014 – Antonio Sanabria (18)
The fact that Antonio Sanabria signed for Roma from Sassuolo was a mere technicality, since he was originally intended to join the Giallorossi from Barcelona but was unable to be registered at the time due to quota limits, so he came via a brief stop in Reggio-Emilia instead.
After a pair of Serie A appearances for Sassuolo, Sanabria completed his move to Roma in the summer of 2014, at which point he was still only 18. However, at senior level, he would only play twice for Rudi Garcia’s side.
Sanabria went back to Spanish football afterwards, but ended up back in Italy, representing Genoa and Torino, and was even linked with a return to Roma (which didn’t materialise) in 2023.
2013 – Adem Ljajic (21)
On the opposite flank to Iturbe, one of Roma’s other frustrating (though arguably slightly less so) wingers of the era was Adem Ljajic, who was also 21 when he joined, one year earlier than the Paraguay international.
Ljajic had spent three-and-a-half years with Fiorentina before joining for Roma’s new project under Garcia. Despite scoring on his debut, Ljajic only netted a total of six goals in his first season.
His tally improved to nine the following season, but Roma offloaded him soon after, and following a forgettable year with Inter, he perhaps found his level again at Torino.
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