Roma are returning to the Champions League next season, but how far have their current players been in the competition before?
Not since the 2018-19 season have Roma competed in the Champions League. However, some of the players that have helped them get back to that level have featured in the tournament before.
It’s too early to determine what Roma’s target will be in the Champions League next season. They won’t want to make up the numbers, but it’s a much tougher competition than the Europa League and Conference League.
As the anticipation starts to set in for Roma’s return to the Champions League, here’s how far their current players (some of whom might not stick around for next season’s journey, admittedly) have reached in seasons gone by.
Stephan El Shaarawy, who is leaving the club as a free agent, and any players concluding loan spells with Roma such as Kostas Tsimikas, aren’t counted.
Group Stage or League Phase
Roma will be going straight into the league phase of the 2026-27 Champions League, which will be the third edition of the competition since the switch from a group stage.
The most recent Roma player to have taken part in the Champions League is Robinio Vaz, who made four league phase appearances for Marseille this season, all from the bench, before joining the Giallorossi in January.
Three of his Roma teammates have played in the old-style group stage of the Champions League before, without getting any further. Goalkeeper Mile Svilar made three appearances for Benfica in the 2017-18 group stage, when he was only 18. He made a high-profile mistake against Manchester United, but has come a long way since in Rome.
More recently, Matías Soulé played in the 2022-23 group stage for Juventus and Neil El Aynaoui played in the 2023-24 group stage for Lens. They both made three appearances, all from the bench (although El Aynaoui came on in the first half for one of his). In both cases, their teams finished third and dropped into the Europa League.
Round of 16
Five Roma players have gone one step further and reached the round of 16, with one doing so with the club themselves.
Bryan Cristante was part of the most recent Roma squad to play in the Champions League during his first season with the club, 2018-19. He had also previously played in the Champions League for AC Milan and Benfica, without ever featuring beyond the group stage. With Roma, he played in all but their first group game against Real Madrid and then in both legs of the round of 16, where they fell to Porto.
The four players to have reached a round of 16 with other clubs before joining Roma are Pierluigi Gollini with Atalanta in 2019-20 and 2020-21 (both times under the guidance of Gian Piero Gasperini, but only playing the first leg on each occasion), Zeki Çelik with Lille in 2021-22 (starting both legs of their loss to Chelsea after also starting five of their six group games, and all six group games back in the 2019-20 season), Devyne Rensch with Ajax in 2021-22 (although he only played a minute across the two legs of their tie with Benfica, before they failed to get past the group stage the season after) and Evan Ndicka with Eintracht Frankfurt in 2022-23 (not missing a minute of their eight games along the way before being knocked out by Napoli).
Quarter-final
This season was the first time in six years that Mario Hermoso didn’t play in the Champions League, since he even got to while on loan at Bayer Leverkusen from Roma in the second half of 2024-25.
Before that, he played in five consecutive editions of the tournament with Atlético Madrid. They reached the quarter-finals in three of those seasons, but the defender – who scored in the group stages in 2020, 2022 and 2023 – only played in the second leg of the last one in April 2024, when Diego Simeone’s side were eliminated by eventual runners-up Borussia Dortmund.
Semi-final
Roma’s best ever run in the Champions League era was to the semi-finals in 2017-18 and, although he is still awaiting a contract renewal, there is still one player remaining from that group.
It was Lorenzo Pellegrini’s first season back at the club as a first-team player, although he was a rotation option at the time. Of his first eight Champions League appearances for the club, four were starts and four were from the bench.
He started the second leg of the semi-final against Liverpool, which was a 4-2 win for Roma (but didn’t overturn the aggregate deficit). Pellegrini also played in both legs of the round of 16 the following season before Roma’s Champions League exile began.
In those years since, one player who has featured for three different clubs in the Champions League is Angeliño. He began the 2019-20 campaign with Manchester City before reaching the semi-finals with RB Leipzig (although it was in the season with single-leg knockout ties after lockdown). The left-back also played Champions League football with Galatasaray before joining Roma.
Final
Roma’s most experienced Champions League player, who will be hoping to stay for their return to that level, is Paulo Dybala. The Argentine forward has 18 goals from 53 Champions League games for Juventus.
He scored four goals on their run to the final in his second season with the club, 2016-17, and was in the starting lineup that lost to Real Madrid. However, the furthest he ever got after that was the quarter-final, and his last appearance in the competition was in the round of 16 in March 2022.
Coincidentally, Real Madrid were also the club that defeated Roma’s other former Champions League finalist, Donyell Malen. The Dutch forward came on as a late substitute in the 2024 final, when Madrid beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0.
Malen went on to score against Madrid in the following season’s league phase before leaving for Aston Villa. In total, Malen has 31 Champions League appearances to his name (25 for Dortmund and the rest for PSV) and 6 goals (all for Dortmund). And after his permanent move to Roma was confirmed following his incredible 15-goal loan spell, he will have more to add next season.
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