Sometimes a goal can change your life. This is the story of Alessandro Romano , a midfielder born in 2006 who joined Cagliari on loan from Roma this summer. He decided the match against Parma, scoring his first Serie A goal and putting himself in the spotlight in a league desperately searching for young talent.
Preferably Italians, to revive a national team that has been sitting idly by for three World Cups. This is where the new coach, Roberto Mancini, comes in, and he'll be in the stands at the Tardini on Saturday to watch him . Romano has played for the Swiss youth teams until now, having been born in Switzerland on June 17, 20 years ago, in Winterthur, Canton of Zurich. But he still has a chance to join the senior Italian national team.
Son of an artist (his father Umberto was a footballer), he holds dual citizenship, as his grandparents are Italian, as is his surname.
This is why Mancini—who witnessed the goal and performance against Parma firsthand—is already working on it, as confirmed by the midfielder himself, who has never yet made his debut for the Swiss senior national team. "It's not a priority," the former Roma player says, speaking about which team he might play for in the future. Perhaps it's not a priority for him, but for Italian football a little more so.
Meanwhile, Roman social media is already talking about 'regret' in letting a young player like him go after a long journey through the Giallorossi youth system, where he arrived in 2022 thanks to a scout's recommendation to Bruno Conti.
The 1982 World Cup winner saw him running on video and was dazzled. Soon after, he was already at Roma's training center. A midfielder with a knack for scoring, he'd already collected six goals and eight assists in 30 appearances for Roma's U18 team. But his coach described him as a promising young man: left-footed, capable of playing in front of the defense, but also as a midfielder, with good reading of the ball and filling in spaces.
(Unioneonline)
