The Roma striker saga has taken yet another search, as they now look to be finalizing a deal with Real Madrid for Borja Mayoral.
Last month, the stage was set for Arkadiusz Milik to become Roma’s newest striker. The deal would in-turn see Edin Dzeko complete his move to Juventus but in an unexpected twist, Milik denied Roma’s offer of 5M euros over five years, and now Dzeko has lost out on his move to the Italian champions.
But the Bosnian seems content. Captain of the club and adored by fans, Dzeko looks set to be Roma’s main man up top for a sixth season. But at 34-years-old, the ex-Manchester City man isn’t getting any younger and hence, Roma boss Paulo Fonseca has been in the market for a striker.
Mayoral is now the man in the spotlight. The Real Madrid striker hasn’t made an appearance for the club since 2018 having spent the last two campaigns on loan at Levante. With them he’s scored a total of 11 league goals – a rather uninspiring stat for Roma to go off.
But he’s young, only 23-years-old, and a different kind of striker to Dzeko. Mayoral is a poacher; he’s scored 65% of his goals since 2018 from inside the box, and with just a single touch of the ball. Also in this same time period, Mayoral hasn’t scored a headed goal in that time.
The towering Dzeko is all round striker. He’s much more of an aerial threat. Mayoral on the other hand is a more dynamic attacker, someone who could likely cover on the wing or just behind the striker, or even playing off Dzeko.
His recent goal tally for Levante isn’t great but it shouldn’t be judged too harshly. The Spaniard clearly has something about him given his presence at Madrid and for whatever reason, it’s not quite worked out.
Madrid is a notoriously hard team for a youngster to break into and perhaps Mayoral knows he’s best off heading elsewhere to fulfill his true potential, and Roma could be just that place.
An attacking team on the up, Roma scored one more goal than eventual champions Juventus last season, as they claimed a well-earned 5th-place finish. They’ve spent well this summer too – Jordan Veretout comes in for seven-figure sums, as does Carles Perez, whilst Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Gianluca Mancini make their stay permanent, and Pedro joins on a free.
There’s plenty of attacking experience in this side for Mayoral to feed off and plenty more opportunity for first-team football than he currently has in Spain.
He only has a year left on his Madrid contract, and the club are keen to sell. Reports claim however that Roma might prefer an initial loan deal with the option to buy permanently, but for that to happen, Madrid would need to offer Mayoral a further one year on his contract.
Negotiations are underway though and Roma will look to engineer the best possible deal. Mayoral looks like a player who’s not yet shown what he’s best capable of but with a more suited team like Roma, we could yet see that potential. This is an interesting one to watch, and one that might excite Roma fans.