There aren't many hard and fast rules to being a Giallorossi fan but page one of the AS Roma Fan Manual includes explicit instructions on how fans should react when a Roma suits up for the team: you should go mental… in the best possible way. We've mentioned it many times in these spaces but when a local kid suits up for the Giallorossi, it just hits a bit differently. You can't explain exactly what it matters, you just know that it does… a lot.

And those emotional swings are more extreme when the kid in question is returning to Roma. We saw it several years ago when Lorenzo Pellegrini first started making a name for himself with Sassuolo, sending Roma fans into a tizzy wondering when our golden boy would return to the fold. Fortunately for us, the Giallorossi were clever enough to insert a €10 million buyback option when they sold Pellegrini to Sassuolo in the summer of 2015, making for a relatively stress-free reunion when the club's former ballboy returned to the capital in 2017.