Matias Soulé has taken the 18 jersey, a number which hasn’t panned out well for Roma players over the last two decades. But Wayne Girard promises the Argentinian will deliver like one of his countrymen who won big with the Giallorossi…
Oh, how beautiful that pair was between Francesco Totti and Antonio Cassano. No 10 and No 18 danced across the pitch, with the elegance of a waltz and simultaneously uncontrolled rhythm of a salsa, that only they knew the steps to. It wasn’t a relationship to be measured in statistics or metrics, but in love for football. They were magical to watch, and arguably the best duo to ever play the game here.
It was somewhat ironic, given that they played similar roles as second forwards, and some wondered if the two would be compatible before Roma made the record signing for a teenager way back in 2001. ‘Fantantonio’ left a few years later after falling out with the club, which he has since apologised for and regrets about what could have been. Thus, the world was cheated out of a fairy tale ending for the two, as No18 would make more rounds than the carousel in Piazza Navona.
Since Cassano, several others have chosen the same number, and virtually all were failures or played insignificant roles at the club: Valerio Virga, Mauro Esposito, Gianluca Curci, Ezequiel Ponce, Bogdan Lobont, Davide Santon and Ola Solbakken. At least half these players came to the capital with great expectations.
Virga was a highly touted prospect whose career came to little, Esposito stopped knowing how to score goals as soon as he was without his striking partner David Suazo at Cagliari, Curci took years before he became a reliable starter (at best), and Ponce went on three different loans after tearing a knee ligament. Lobont rarely saw match time, therefore concealing the number on the bench, while Santon never earned the starting role and retired at the club after clinical knee injuries at just 32 years of age, and Solbakken most recently failed in his loan at Urawa Red Diamonds in Japan. To say it’s cursed might be an understatement.
Soulé and Dybala speak the same football language
But Soulé won’t be like every No 18 in the last 23 years. He’s a different breed. Once he joined Juventus from Velez Sarsfield, Soulé took to Italian football like a fish to water. He showed great signs at first with a goal-scoring action in a third of all matches played during his first season with the under-19s in 2020/21. He was then integrated to the professional level by Max Allegri, with time spent at Juve Next Gen, a few appearances for the senior team at league and European competition. But it was last season’s loan at Frosinone where he truly caught the eye of the rest of Serie A.
Not only did Soulé end 2023 by accomplishing the most dribbles in Europe’s top five leagues, he achieved prolific numbers across the board. The Argentinean of Italian heritage had the most chances created and successful dribbles in Serie A with 82 and 101 respectively. In the under-21 category, he had the most key passes with 84, and was just marginally behind for most successful dribbles and shots attempted. Bravado.
When you have a player of this quality, full of energy at a young age and yearning to prove himself, and then match him with one of the most talented players of his respective generation who speaks the same language as him, literally and figuratively, it’s the perfect recipe for an alchemical bond. We might be on the verge of something phenomenal.
While we were robbed of more telepathy between Cassano and Totti, the Dybala-Soulé tandem could be redemption for Romanisti, who have never truly healed from the tumultuous breakup that saw Cassano – and greater hopes for a Scudetto – vanish from the streets of Rome.
While we discuss the Virgas and the Solbakkens, perhaps for Soulé it’s best to remember the player who wore it just before Cassano – the legendary Argentine, goal-bombing, Scudetto winning, Gabriel Omar Batistuta.