ROME – Replace a thirty-four year old with a thirty-five year old? It is possible, especially if the older one played twenty-eight more games than the other last season, even reaching a Champions League final. Roma’s idea is to make a real “switch” of experience between Chris Smalling and Mats Hummels. The English defender is out, the German center back is in. The first is 34 years old, the second 35 but physically he looks five years younger. And perhaps the opposite could be said about the Roma player, unfortunately for him, due to the injuries that tormented him in what was most likely his last year in the Giallorossi.
Smalling of Arabia: the scenario
Ghisolfi, the new head of Roma’s sports area, is working to find a team in Smalling. Where? In the only possible place that he can guarantee him a good contract without looking too much at the injury news: Saudi Arabia. The agent is moving, he has offered it and there may have been some openings to get to a possible white smoke. Also because there had already been contacts between Smalling and the Arabs last summer, with the central defender attracted by the idea of a new challenge and one last super contract.
Rome, the Hummels option
So if Roma manage to sell the English defender, at that point they would throw themselves at the now former Borussia Dortmund, who have already been contacted. Clearly, the operation clashes with the project advertised by the Giallorossi club: Hummels – a free agent – will turn 36 in December, but he is evidently the player that De Rossi needs to have to guarantee the group international experience, charisma and, of course, defensive qualities. Physically strong, athletically intact, good at setting up the game and making himself dangerous in high balls. Mats wants to try an adventure abroad, but always in Europe: for him, Arabia can wait. Or just not being in the plans. And then he would be the exception to the Giallorossi rule, that of youth and sustainability, to guarantee the coach a ready and useful player during a season full of championship and cup matches. The salary is affordable: in Germany he earned 3.7 million net, in the capital he can be satisfied with even a little less, in one or two seasons.
The obstacles to get to Hummels
World Cup victory, five German championships, three German cups, six Super Cups. His track record speaks for itself and can convince any club to trust him despite the year he was born. Hummels was also named in the top 11 of the last Champions League, the one lost in the final against the monstrous Real Madrid. Once the personal and planning obstacles have been overcome, the big question that they certainly asked themselves in Trigoria is whether a player who is still hungry will eventually arrive – as Friedkin asks – or whether Roma will see a different version of Hummels, the one with the last contract and with less ambition. Well, one thing is certain: if the club focuses on him it will certainly have found an answer to this last doubt linked to the German pillar.
