As Roma prepare to ramp up negotiations for a loan deal for West Ham and Azzurri striker Gianluca Scamacca, there are certain things that the Giallorossi could learn from the 24-year-old’s debut season in the Premier League.
Tiago Pinto is expected to fly over to East London on Thursday to meet with representatives from West Ham over a potential move for the former Sassuolo man according to La Gazzetta dello Sport.
Roma are in desperate need of attacking reinforcements for the 2023-24 campaign after the significant knee injury to first choice centre-forward Tammy Abraham on the penultimate game of this season.
So a loan move for Scamacca, who has fallen out of favour under David Moyes, seems to make perfect sense, but there are still one or two things that the Giallorossi could note from this season if they are to eventually convince West Ham to let their striker make a temporary exit.
Firstly, Jose Mourinho will need to set his team up in a way that gets the best out of Scamacca’s qualities. In a recent interview on the Filthy Fellas podcast in May, Hammers teammate Michail Antonio explained why David Moyes’ system has not suited him.
“He can’t play the way the gaffer plays. He needs a different type of manager to play his type of football. He needs a manager who can play and have other players come off him and stuff like that,” Antonio explained.
“You can see that, when the ball comes into him it sticks and he’s tidy, but how David Moyes Moyes plays is like if you’re playing up front, you’re dealing with scraps and you’ve got to be more of a fighter and that’s not him.”
If they are to get the best version of him, Roma will need to make sure that they have the right players around him to feed off his hold-up play and make the runs in behind the opposition defence.
Secondly, Roma and their supporters would be wise to appreciate the fact that Scamacca recently underwent a fairly significant operation on his knee, which kept him out of action for the final eight league games of the season. With fitness issues and other minor injuries before that, Scamacca had missed the last 18 Premier League games of 2022-23 all told.
He will need to put in a lot of hard work over the summer to be fit enough to start from the off next season, and Roma may need some patience with him over the first few weeks of the season as he returns to match fitness.
Finally, and a slightly more positive angle, is that Scamacca had a brilliant season in Europe for the East Londoners. Five goals in nine appearances in fact, helping West Ham on their way to the Conference League final, where they eventually inflicted a 2-1 defeat on Fiorentina.
With Roma set for another season in the Europa League next season, Scamacca’s goalscoring prowess in Europe could come in very handy if they are to go one further in the competition than they did this season.