Lorenzo Pellegrini recently became the 18th player to score 60 goals for Roma with his finish against Bologna.
Roma could only draw the first leg of their Europa League round of 16 clash, with Pellegrini scoring from close range to equalise.
Here are the six most recent Roma players to hit 60 goals for the club and how quickly they managed to.
Lorenzo Pellegrini (in 344 games)
After returning to Roma in 2017, Pellegrini scored his first goal for the club at senior level that December, with a header against SPAL.
It wasn’t until a couple of seasons into his Roma career that he began to be used in a more attacking midfield role, from which his output became more frequent.
Indeed, it took Pellegrini 121 games (including his only appearance before his two-season stint at Sassuolo) to reach 10 goals for the club. It only took him another 29 after that to reach 20, and again another 29 to reach 30.
He hit double figures of goals in Paulo Fonseca’s last season in charge, José Mourinho’s first, and also the 2023-24 campaign that ended under the guidance of his old teammate, Daniele De Rossi.
Pellegrini’s 60 goals for Roma include 14 penalties and 4 direct free kicks. His output has declined in recent years, but he was able to bring up his 60th goal for Roma with his 5th of the season under Gian Piero Gasperini’s management in March.
Stephan El Shaarawy (in 245 games)
Every now and then, you see accounts on social media reminiscing on El Shaarawy’s emergence at AC Milan and regarding him as a wonder kid who didn’t meet his potential. But that seems slightly disingenuous given how many goals he has scored for Roma.
After joining on loan in January 2016, El Shaarawy hit the ground running with 8 goals from 18 games before making his move permanent.
He added another 32 goals over the next three seasons before leaving the club for Shanghai Shenhua.
The El Shaarawy that returned to Roma in early 2021 hasn’t been as prolific with his goalscoring ratios, but has turned up with some big goals in key moments still, adding another 25 to his tally for the club.
He reached 60 goals by November 2023 on what was his 245th appearance for Roma with a last-minute goal to give Mourinho’s side daylight against Udinese.
Daniele De Rossi (in 583 games)
By virtue of having the second highest appearance collection in Roma’s history, De Rossi also scored plenty of goals over the years, accumulating a final tally of 63 from 616 games.
His 60th goal came in his penultimate season – and first as official captain – when he scored against Torino in March 2018.
After that, the midfielder scored two penalties and one goal with his midriff over the next 13 months. There was a distance of nearly 16 years between his first and last Roma goals.
Along the way, De Rossi also became the highest-scoring midfielder ever for Italy’s national team.
The most he ever scored in one season for Roma was 11 in the 2009-10 campaign, initially under Spalletti and then mainly under Claudio Ranieri, the coach he would later finish his Roma career playing for after their 2019 reunion.
Edin Džeko (in 109 games)
Few would have predicted Džeko would go on to reach 60 goals, let alone the century that he eventually achieved, when he only just got to double figures from his first season at Roma.
But the former Manchester City striker turned things around in emphatic fashion with one of the best goalscoring seasons ever by a Roma player at the second time of asking, scoring 39 times under the guidance of Luciano Spalletti in 2016-17.
It was during the 2017-18 season that he cemented his reputation, inspiring Roma’s run to the Champions League semi-finals under Eusebio Di Francesco. But before the knockout phase began was when he brought up his 60th goal in all competitions for Roma.
Coincidentally, it was in the December win over SPAL in which Pellegrini later opened his account for the club.
Džeko eventually finished his Roma career one short of another 60 goals, ending up on 119 from 260 appearances.
Mirko Vučinić (in 184 games)
Vučinić is another example of a player who needed time to fulfil his goalscoring potential for Roma. He only scored three goals in his debut season back in 2006-07, although he wasn’t often used as a centre-forward.
The Montenegrin went on to hit double figures of goals in each of his other four seasons with the club, the most prolific of which was 2009-10 with 19 goals. Incidentally, that wasn’t enough for him to be their top scorer that season, since Francesco Totti got 25, but Vučinić had been the top scorer the season before with 17 (a couple higher than Totti that time around).
60 was the last multiple of 10 that Vučinić reached with Roma, hitting the milestone in January 2011 against the club he would join later that year, Juventus, in a Coppa Italia quarter-final.
Vučinić finished his Roma spell with 64 goals from 202 games.
Vincenzo Montella (in 138 games)
Prior to Džeko, the last Roma player to score 60 goals and go on to add at least the other 40 needed for a century was Montella.
He wasn’t necessarily the tall target man Fabio Capello wanted when he took the Roma job in 1999, hence the purchase of Gabriel Batistuta the following year that eclipsed the record fee spent to sign Montella from Sampdoria, but L’Aeroplanino scored at such a rate that it became impossible to not consider him a focal point.
Montella scored 21 goals in his first season with Roma, which at the time made him the first player since Rodolfo Volk in 1928-29 to score 20 goals or more in their debut season with the club. (Only Batistuta, Tammy Abraham and Romelu Lukaku have done it since).
His 18 the following season included 13 in the league to help Roma to the Scudetto. Then, he scored 15 from 26 games in 2001-02, a season interrupted by a thigh injury but the one in which he then famously scored four goals in one game against Lazio.
By March of his fourth season, Montella scored his 60th goal for Roma in a 2-1 loss to Udinese. Once again, though, his goal tally decreased year on year, and it did the season after too.
But Montella bounced back to score 23 goals in his most prolific Roma season in 2004-05, without which the club may well have suffered relegation from Serie A after going through four coaches in a turbulent campaign. (Roma only finished three points above the relegation zone).
Montella reached 100 goals for Roma – the sixth player to do so – by scoring against Catania in November 2006. It was his second-to-last goal for the club, who he played 258 times for in total.
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