The Englishman was shunted out of Old Trafford in 2019, but has since become key at Roma
Interview Matt Nash
INTERVIEW
After spending the last four years in Rome since swapping Manchester for the Eternal City, how’s your Italian?
[Smiles] It could be better, but equally I can do interviews and have conversations, so it’s pretty good. I can get by, and also translate for a lot of my friends and family. There have been ups and downs with it, but once you’ve learnt a foreign language – I’d never learnt another one properly – then you can pick up others after. It’s a work in progress.
You signed a two-year contract extension in April. That must be an indication of how much you’re enjoying your time at Roma?
When I first joined Roma on a season-long loan in 2019, it was a last-minute thing and hadn’t been the plan at the beginning of the summer, but it happened and I find myself still here to this day. My family have taken to it, too – it was a chaotic time to have to say, “We’re going in 48 hours!” In April, I weighed up all of my options – in Italy and potentially back in England – but it just felt right to stay.
Had you always wanted to experience life in a foreign country or was the move purely out of necessity?
I never had a huge aspiration to go and play abroad. It’s difficult to get much better than Manchester United but, at the same time, it came to a point where I knew there would be some rotation, that I’d probably be the third-choice centre-back, and that’s not really me. I’d rather play than be sat on the bench, but I was frustrated to find out towards the end of the transfer window and start looking for a new club with 48 hours left – loads of doors were closed. My son had been born a couple of months earlier, so in many ways it would have been easier to stay put, play half of the matches and be settled, but fortunately my wife was up for going to Rome and we had to make a decision quite quickly.
Fellow Englishman Tammy Abraham joined Roma a couple of years later, arriving from Chelsea for £34 million. Did you know each other well beforehand?
I didn’t know Tammy that well, although prior to him signing he reached out and asked me what it was like in Italy. He arrived, took over Rome and hit the ground running in his first campaign [scoring 27 goals, the most prolific debut season of any Roma player since 1930]. He was really unlucky to suffer an ACL injury on the final weekend of last season – I felt so bad for him.
Can players suffer from a lack of exposure if they move to an overseas club, especially when it comes to being se
