The Roman Report — 31 August 2026 – 6 September 2026

There is a particular kind of electricity that crackles through a club in the final hours of a transfer window, and this week AS Roma were absolutely alive with it. The story that mattered most on Sunday evening was not just one move but an entire chain of decisions, each one unlocking the next, each one telling you something about the ambition and the method of this new Roma under Gian Piero Gasperini. First came the confirmation — via Fabrizio Romano, as these things so often do — that Robinio Vaz had been cleared to travel to England for medical examinations with Hull City, a loan deal worth €2 million with a purchase option set at an eye-catching €30 million. That figure alone tells you what Roma think of the boy's ceiling. But what made the Vaz story genuinely fascinating was the reason it had been held up in the first place: Gasperini had planted his feet and refused to let another forward leave until he had assurances that a replacement was coming. That is not a coach who is merely tolerating the transfer circus. That is a coach with his hands on the wheel.

And when Gasperini plants his feet, Roma listen. Because the very fact that the green light was eventually given carries its own meaning. The sources suggest — and the logic of the moment supports — that the authorization of Vaz's departure is connected to accelerating negotiations for Jamie Leweling, the Stuttgart winger who has now overtaken Luiz Henrique as the club's primary attacking target. Roma have placed a formal offer of €35 million, inclusive of bonuses, on Stuttgart's desk. They had reached a verbal agreement with Zenit over Luiz Henrique, but stepped back from that operation to concentrate their resources on Leweling, a 2001-born German international whose versatility, pace and capacity to attack across both flanks fits what Gasperini wants from a wide player like a glove. The window closes, and Stuttgart's answer will define whether this offensive recruitment concludes with a flourish or with a question mark that lingers into September.

There is also the Manu Koné dimension to navigate, and it is not a comfortable one. Chelsea — under Xabi Alonso, no less — have reportedly placed him high on their shortlist, with their interest contingent on Enzo Fernandez's departure to Manchester City. Roma's response has been admirably firm: €55 million or he stays. In the final hours of a window, with a tricky away fixture at Lecce already on the schedule and a Champions League campaign about to begin, losing a player of Koné's quality and character would have been a wound the squad could ill afford. Roma have decided — correctly, in my view — that protecting the midfield core is non-negotiable. Koné may have Premier League dreams, but dreams and a transfer window do not always align, and Roma's resistance here deserves genuine credit.

Away from the window's turbulence, there was football to be played, and the trip to Via del Mare was everything you might expect from a Gasperini side finding its rhythm. Roma travelled to Lecce on Sunday afternoon carrying the glow of that extraordinary 4–0 opening-day demolition of Fiorentina — a result Gasperini was careful to defend at his press conference, pointing out that Fiorentina's subsequent 3–0 defeat to Frosinone says nothing about what Roma produced at the Olimpico, which was "a proof of absolute value for intensity, quality and solidity." The coach was set to make minimal changes, with nine of his eleven essentially certain. Mile Svilar behind a back three of Mancini, N'Dicka and Hermoso; Wesley at left-back; Cristante and Koné anchoring the midfield; Dybala and Malen leading the attack. Donyell Malen, who scored a hat-trick against Fiorentina, had the chance to become only the second Roma player in 65 years to score at least four goals in the opening two matches of a season — a fact that makes you reach for your scarf and exhale slowly. The two questions Gasperini left unresolved were the right-back battle between Nahuel Molina and Emanuele Lulli, where the numbers gave Molina a 55–45 edge, and the role just behind the front two, where Rodrigo Mora held a 65–35 advantage over Matías Soulé. Gasperini's endorsement of both players — "He will play as well" on Soulé; genuine praise for Lulli's application — speaks to a manager who does not discard his options lightly.

On the subject of new faces, the signings of Marten de Roon and Leonardo Balerdi represent something worth dwelling on. The radio pundits were divided on De Roon — and those doubts are understandable, given that the departure of Neil El Aynaoui to RB Leipzig for a reported €29 million package raises its own set of questions about whether that sale was truly the right call — but Lorenzo Pes of Teleradiostereo put it well when he said that the club has made a precise choice: Gasperini's line is the line, and every decision flows from it. De Roon knows this system. He knows this coach. And if Pes is right that Balerdi represents the best piece of business this entire window, then the loan from Marseille with a €15 million conditional purchase obligation looks, on paper at least, like exactly the kind of intelligent, low-risk reinforcement a team entering the Champions League needs. Gasperini called both arrivals "captains," and that word — from a man who chooses his words about players with some care — says more than any statistic.

There is, of course, the rather extraordinary context of Roma's return to the Champions League after seven years away, qualified through a third-place finish in Serie A last season — and already it is producing those moments of rich football romance that the competition does better than any other. Davide Ancelotti, son of Carlo, the man who captained Roma and whose wife called the city home for years, will bring his Lille side to the Stadio Olimpico in January. He spoke about it with genuine feeling — a special stadium, a special city, "the last of the difficult away fixtures" — and you could hear the weight of it in his words. For Roma supporters, the sight of that fixture in the calendar will carry its own particular tenderness. As for the domestic schedule, Serie A has confirmed that the fourth-round fixture against Torino will fall on Monday 14 September at 18:30, the day after Roma face Fenerbahce away in the Champions League on the 10th — a demanding little double that will test squad depth and recovery in equal measure. With the transfer window about to close, with Stuttgart yet to give their answer on Leweling, and with the full shape of this squad still not quite resolved, the questions that matter most this week are not the ones already answered but the ones that will only become clear once the deadline passes and Gasperini takes stock of exactly what he has to work with.