The past five Roma goalkeepers to leave without making an appearance

Roma have just waved goodbye – for now, at least – to summer signing Devis Vásquez, without the goalkeeper making an appearance for them yet.

Some say it’s an easy life being a backup or third-choice goalkeeper, who rarely get the chance to play. In recent years, Roma have had the likes of Mathew Ryan only playing once, while Pierluigi Gollini recently made his debut only after the first anniversary of his arrival at the club.

Vásquez himself could yet return to Roma and make an appearance after his loan spell away, but the fact of the matter is he has been offloaded before debuting.

So, which other goalkeepers have come and gone at Roma without playing in an official match?

Not counting graduates of the club’s own academy, here are the five most recent goalkeepers to join Roma but leave before setting foot on the pitch.

Devis Vásquez

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When Vásquez joined Roma in July after being released by AC Milan, he probably expected to be Mile Svilar’s main backup. After all, he had played 32 times in Serie A the previous season on loan at Empoli and it was expected at the time that Gollini would leave Roma, given his tense history with his ex-Atalanta coach, Gian Piero Gasperini.

But Gollini stayed put after a loan move to Cremonese collapsed despite Roma’s green light, and unsurprisingly, Svilar retained the lion’s share of gametime in goal.

Thus, ex-Sheffield Wednesday keeper Vásquez effectively became third choice, with Gollini getting the nod for Roma’s last game of the league phase in the Europa League when Svilar was finally rested for the first time in the 2025-26 season.

Subsequently, Vásquez signed for Beşiktaş on loan in February, representing the second successive window in which there was business between the two clubs after Tammy Abraham’s summer switch.

Beşiktaş are believed to have an option to buy Vásquez, whose Roma contract otherwise runs until 2027.

Simone Farelli

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Born in Rome, Farelli began his career in the lower tiers of Italian football, eventually making his only Serie A appearance for Siena on the final day of the 2011-12 season at the age of 29.

Eight years later, in October 2020, Roma required more senior depth in the goalkeeping department after letting Robin Olsen and Daniel Fuzato leave on loan. Pau López and Antonio Mirante were already stationed as first and second choice, but the club were keen to take on a new third choice to allow Pietro Boer to keep playing for the Primavera.

Farelli’s last competitive appearance had been in Serie B back in December 2016 for Trapani, so he was never expected to play for his hometown team. Instead, his role would be that of a mentor to the other goalkeepers (even though he was only a few months older than Mirante).

Farelli quietly retired at the end of his contract, which was worth approximately just €40,000 over the course of the season – less than most of his teammates were earning in a week – and has since worked for the club as a goalkeeping coach for the Primavera between 2022 and 2024 and then the first team since Daniele De Rossi’s appointment as head coach and the construction of a new backroom team in January 2024, staying in his post under the various regimes since.

Dimitrios Eleftheropoulos

Eleftheropoulos entered Italian football in 2004 by joining Messina from Olympiacos in his native Greece, where he had played more than 150 times.

His time with Messina lasted for a single season before he was picked up by AC Milan, but they shifted him to Roma later in the same summer having only used him in pre-season.

Eleftheropoulos was 30 at the time he came to Roma, but arrived in the same timeframe as Doni, who went on to become Roma’s first choice. The second choice for Luciano Spalletti’s debut season was Gianluca Curci, so Eleftheropoulos never debuted. 

He was let go at the end of the season as Júlio Sérgio arrived in his place. In stark contrast, the Brazilian ultimately went on to fulfil a pathway from third choice all the way to first choice. 

Andrea Campagnolo

Campagnolo was still just 19 when he joined Roma from Cittadella, where he was yet to make his debut but was regarded as a prospect.

The move occurred in 1997, the same year in which Roma signed new first-choice keeper Michael Konsel (the Austrian becoming their first foreign keeper) and new second-in-command Antonio Chimenti.

Already 35, Konsel was a safe pair of hands that season, before Chimenti began to phase him out the season after. But there was no such progression for Campagnolo, who sat on the bench for 6 games in 1997-98, 27 games in 1998-99 and 4 in 1999-00 – demoted once more by the arrivals of Francesco Antonioli and Cristiano Lupatelli – before leaving for Genoa. 

Andrea Pazzagli

Pazzagli made his Serie A debut for Udinese in September 1980 and a second top-flight appearance in February of the same season, but had to wait until 1986 to feature at that level again with Ascoli.

The opponents upon his top-flight return were AC Milan, which was fateful as they would become his next club in 1989. There, he worked his way into contention as the first choice for Arrigo Sacchi’s side (although he was the sub when they won the European Cup in 1990).

After two seasons with Milan, Pazzagli joined Bologna, where he spent the same amount of time until he joined Roma in 1993 at the start of Carlo Mazzone’s reign. Aged 33 by this point, Pazzagli spent a single season in the capital, in which he usually sat on the bench.

Fabrizio Lorieri and Giovanni Cervone were the goalkeepers Mazzone gave appearances to (23 and 15 respectively) that season instead, before Pazzagli finished his career with two years in Serie C with Prato.