As most of our longtime readers know, outside of my Roma obsessions, I am a giant Chicago Cubs fan. For more than a century, the Cubs were the laughing stock of Major League Baseball, finding new ways to torture a fanbase that hadn’t tasted World Series success since 1908. And much like Roma, the Cubs’ fortunes seemingly reversed after they were purchased by the Ricketts family, who ushered in a new era of prosperity in the 2010s, winning that elusive title in 2016.
Spending millions of dollars every offseason, grooming homegrown talent, and delivering the team to the post-season nearly every year for a solid half-decade was an amazing feeling. But it didn’t feel normal. I had grown so accustomed to the team floundering every year and getting funny looks when I told people which team I supported that suddenly being congratulated for following the Cubs felt incredibly strange.
By now, you’re likely asking yourself what this has to do with Paulo Dybala and Roma. After a slow start to the summer transfer market, our little Roma, who we’d been led to believe was broke, was suddenly throwing cash around like there was no tomorrow. After dropping nearly €60 million upfront for Artem Dovbyk and Matías Soulé, the papers led us to believe the club wasn’t done, that they were prepared to add Federico Chiesa to an already impressive lot of attacking players—it felt too good to be true.
As it turns out, that inexplicably wonderful feeling that Roma was actually building a contending squad with no caveats, no exceptions, and no yeah-buts was a mirage. As it turns out, the good old Roma, the one that shoots itself in the foot at the most inopportune time, is alive and well.
While we may never truly know the root cause, with rumors that Dybala was upset and/or told that his days as an unquestioned starter were up, he soon became linked with a shocking move to Saudi club Al-Qadsiah, with rumors sweeping across the Romaverse over the past 48 hours. With Roma fans across the globe clutching their pearls and praying that this was simply a media bluff by either side, reports from Argentina suggest that Dybala has consented to the move, reportedly agreeing to a contract that will pay him over €20 million per season.
