After 18 years, as he joined the youth academy when he was 11, and eight seasons as a fixture of the first team and 277 appearances, Alessandro Florenzi has left Roma, at least temporarily. The versatile player, who in the last three years has found his role as right back, will finish the season at Valencia. Florenzi aims at being a regular starter, which he no longer was in the Italian Capital, to retain his spot in the Euro 2020 roster with Azzurri. The Giallorossi will move forward with Aleksandar Kolarov, Leonardo Spinazzola, Davide Santon and Bruno Peres as their top fullbacks and the Italian duo can feature on both flanks.
La Lupa has been dealt some heavy blows injury-wise and needed to fill out the roster for the second half of the season and opted to go the Spanish route, adding two youngsters. They poached Carles Perez from Barcelona, who, while appearing mostly with the B-team, has played 13 games with the main squad, posting two goals and three assists. He has scored 13 times and picked up 6 helpers in 55 appearances between La Liga 2 and Segunda Division. He can be deployed all over the front-line and plugs the void by Nicolo Zaniolo’s ACL tear and will try to challenge Cengiz Under and Justin Kluivert on the flanks. He was acquired on a €1M season-long loan with a very feasible €11M conditioned obligation to buy plus €4.5M add-ons.
Gonzalo Villar instead comes from Elche to replace Amadou Diawara, who is out for a while with a meniscus injury. He appeared 39 times over the last two years, scoring twice, and will provide depth behind Jordan Veretout and Bryan Cristante, the only two healthy pivots currently on the roster. He was raised by Valencia. He was purchased for €4M plus plus €1M of add-ons and agreed to a four-and-a-half year contract.
Earlier in the week, Roma had secured the acquisition of Roger Ibanez from Atalanta on a season-long loan with an €8M conditioned obligation to buy. The 21-year-old played just 18 minutes, in Champions League, for the Bergamaschi, but the club was intrigued with the potential he showed before coming to Italy. He can be used either as centre-back or as left-back, so it is possible that they stand pat on the flanks despite the departure of Florenzi, while one of their reserves, either Juan Jesus or Mert Cetin, might leave to see more minutes elsewhere.
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