Rome may be known as the ‘Eternal City’, but if we know one thing about the city’s football fans, it’s that their patience is far from everlasting.
While Evan Ferguson’s move to Roma initially drew a huge amount of excitement in this part of the world, eyebrows have been raised at some of the reports coming out of Italy in recent times.
After what was a promising start to life in Rome, Ferguson has quickly been faced with the reality of the challenge he is facing at his new club. Despite the fact that the calendar is about to tick into November, the Irish striker is still waiting for his first goal for the club. Perhaps even more worryingly, there has been a steady decrease in his playing time in recent weeks.
Couple all of this with some negative comments from his club manager, and suddenly it’s fair to ask: what exactly is going on with Evan Ferguson in Rome?
We spoke to someone on the ground very familiar with the situation to find out.
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Evan Ferguson’s Roma Dreams Have Been Hit With Dose Of Reality
The Roma fanbase is sure to play a big part in the success or failure of Evan Ferguson’s tenure at the club. They welcomed him with open arms after his arrival, but they are a group with notoriously thin patience when it comes to new signings.
Speaking to Balls, Rome based football journalist Alasdair Mackenzie summed up what all players have to deal with after arriving at the Stadio Olimpico.
Roma is a place that has huge highs and lows, it goes up and down a lot. There’s a lot of pressure here.
When you’re in the middle of that glow of excitement and being a fan favourite, the highs get very high very quickly.
But it can also go in the opposite direction pretty quickly too, depending entirely on the performances.
The problem for Ferguson has been not only that he’s not been able to find that goal, but that his performances have slowly but surely not lived up to what he showed in those first couple of games either…
The fans haven’t turned on Ferguson in the same way yet.
They appreciate he’s young, they appreciate that you have to adapt, so he’s going to get a little bit more time.
But the Roma fans are famously not the most patient in Italy, so I do wonder how much longer he’ll get before the lack of goals is going to become a much bigger problem.
Those first couple of games were incredibly promising.
While Evan Ferguson would not score against either Bologna or Pisa, the Italian media were quick to label his signing as a potential stroke of genius from Roma. He was already being labelled as one of the best strikers in Serie A, with one media outlet suggesting that only Inter’s World Cup winner Lautaro Martinez could rival the Irishman as an overall no.9.
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As for the Roma fans, they were equally as enthusiastic about his displays. Some of that had to do with Ferguson’s performances, but it also came as a result of their lack of enthusiasm about the club’s other forward options.
Artem Dovbyk arrived as the club’s record signing in the summer of 2024, and while he would score 17 goals in all competitions, the Roma faithful had seemingly given up on him by the time this season rolled around.
Dovbyk started the campaign as Ferguson’s deputy, with manager Gian Piero Gasperini favouring the use of just one striker in a 3-4-2-1 system.
However, that has quickly changed. Ferguson has suddenly found himself out of the team, with Paulo Dybala starting out of position up front. Dovbyk has also moved ahead of him in the pecking order, meaning the 20-year old has played a total of ten minutes in Roma’s last three league games.
More worryingly, Alasdair Mackenzie explains how the Roma manager has started to question the player in public in recent days:
Gasperini was quite critical of Ferguson publicly for the first time (over the weekend) where he said it was only yesterday that he’s shown the right stuff in training, that he’s not been showing us positive signs yet, and that’s why he’s not playing.
‘He’s young, he’ll be important in the future, but he’s not there at the moment’. Essentially that was the message.
It’s got trickier for him to just find opportunities, to find that goal. If he couldn’t when he was starting every match, it’s gonna be even harder if he’s only gonna get five or ten minutes here and there.
Despite having now gone 12 months without a goal in club football, Evan Ferguson has continued to do the business at international level. The striker has scored three goals in four games in a struggling Ireland side during the World Cup qualifying campaign.
Roma themselves have been on an excellent run of results in recent times, sitting joint top of Serie A after the weekend’s game despite some lacklustre performance.
Goals have been the issue in the team and it has been suggested that Roma hoped Ferguson’s exploits in green would boost his confidence at club level. That has yet to come to fruition.
There have even been rumours in recent days that Ferguson’s loan spell at the club could be a short lived one. Rome newspaper Corriere dello Sport reported over the weekend that the club were considering sending the player back to Brighton in January in order to facilitate a move for Manchester United forward Joshua Zirkzee.
When asked about the validity of those reports, Alasdair Mackenzie explained why such stories need to be taken with a massive pinch of salt.
I’d be surprised. I mean, look, it’s something that happens as soon as there’s a dip in form like this, things like that being written are inevitable.
We have to always remember that there are full length newspapers dedicated entirely to football that come out every day over here, there’s going to be stuff written a lot of the time.
I would be very, very surprised if he doesn’t at least get a full season. He’s not been bad enough to consider cutting things short.
Like I said, his start was actually really good. He needs to just find a way of blocking out all this noise, because there’s going be so much…
It’s not quite happened yet, but with Europa League, Coppa Italia and Serie A, and only one other striker, he is going to get opportunities.
It seems that despite his recent struggles, the door is still very much open for Evan Ferguson to be a success at Roma. The fans are still on his side, although it remains to be seen how much longer that will last.
There is no doubt that everyone involved in this move remain hopeful that it turns out to be a success, with both the player and the club keen for things to go well over the coming months.
From an Irish perspective, it will be hoped that Evan Ferguson’s stop in the Eternal City does not turn out to be a transient one.
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