da poker： Six years on from suffering a motocross-like injury, the outrageously classy centre-back is starting for the Azzurri in Germany

da imperador bet： Riccardo Calafiori was 16 years of age, he'd only just signed his first professional contract with Roma and yet he was being told that his career might already be over. In the 82nd minute of a UEFA Youth League game against Viktoria Plzen, he'd been left with a right knee swollen so badly that it was three times the size of his left after being on the receiving end of a shocking, studs-up tackle from Vaclav Svoboda.

Some of the specialists that assessed the damage done couldn't believe what they'd seen: all of the ligaments had been ruptured, along with his meniscus and articular capsule. "Something like this usually only happens in motocross – not in football," a medic told the . "It's an injury that happens only once every 10 years."

Looking back on it now, Calafiori says he was probably lucky that it happened while he was still so young, because he didn't quite fully grasp the gravity of the situation. But that doesn't make his defiant reaction to such a serious setback any less remarkable.

"The time has come to truly bring out everything that I have inside," he wrote on Instagram just the day after his entire world had been turned upside down. "This time, no decisive match, no final to win… There is the most important battle of my life ahead of me, and I certainly cannot back down. The time has come to put aside the boy, the, at times, little boy that I have been until now, and become a MAN.

"A bad knee injury will keep me sidelined for a long period and will keep me away from the pitch, but the desire to come back STRONGER than before will increase every day. For the umpteenth time I find myself faced with a very difficult challenge but, as always, I will win!!!"

Road to recovery

Calafiori was sidelined for 347 days before making his comeback in a game for Roma's Primavera at the start of the 2019-20 season. Unsurprisingly, there were doubts over whether he would still be the same player after the "hardest" journey of his life.

After all, Calafiori couldn't have been held in higher esteem at Roma before his injury. Even the first-team squad were aware of his prodigious talent. Indeed, after scoring in the senior side's Champions League clash with Plzen just hours after Calafiori had been rushed to hospital, Edin Dzeko ran to the bench and held up a shirt with the youngster's name and number on the back.

Two-and-a-half years later, the attacking left-back teed the Bosnian up for a decisive equaliser as Roma reached the semi-finals of the Europa League with a 1-1 draw with Ajax at the Stadio Olimpico.

AdvertisementGetty ImagesThrown under the bus

At the time, Roma fans were optimistic that the club had unearthed another '' (literally meaning 'flag' in Italian, but more akin to a 'symbol' in a sporting sense) like Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi – a local lad destined to become a Giallorossi legend.

Paulo Fonseca, Roma's coach at the time, was wary of such hyperbole, adamant that Calafiori needed "time to grow" without any undue pressure being placed on his young shoulders. "Suddenly treating him like he’s the best in the world right now is not helpful for the player," the Portuguese warned. "But we trust he’ll have a great future."

Unfortunately for Calafiori, Fonseca parted company with the club in the summer of 2021 and was replaced at the helm by Jose Mourinho, a manager with an infamously poor record when it comes to getting the best out of young talents.

It, thus, came as little surprise to see the supposed 'Special One' throw Calafiori under the bus – along with Bryan Reynolds and Marash Kumbulla – in October 2021 as he looked to send a very pointed message to his new employers about the alleged weakness of the Roma squad.

Less than three months later, Calafiori was loaned to Genoa. At the end of the 2021-2022 season, he was sold to Basel for just €2.6m (£2.2m/$2.8m).

GettyRoma's regrets

De Rossi recently admitted that he still finds the nature of Calafiori's exit "tough to stomach". Having returned to Roma as coach in January, succeeding Mourinho at the helm, he remains disgusted that such a promising player was allowed to leave the club – and for such a small fee, with no buy-back or sell-on clause included either.

De Rossi acknowledges that Calafiori wasn't ready to become a starter while still only a teenager, but felt that his potential was obvious. Even more frustratingly for the former Italy midfielder, he thought all along that Calafiori had the makings of a fine centre-back – which is exactly what he's become thanks in no small part to one of De Rossi's former international colleagues, Thiago Motta.

Getty From Basel to Bologna

Calafiori obviously didn't want to leave Roma in the first place, but felt that he had no option at the time. “I played a bit under Mourinho at Roma but I wanted to play more, so I went to Genoa and it didn’t go well," he told reporters earlier this month. "There wasn’t space for me there either, so then I went to Basel.

"I wasn’t too convinced, initially. I was almost obliged to go [to find first-team football]. But I immediately changed my mind. They had everything a young player needs to develop. I made 30 appearances for the first time, which helped me grow."

Even more significantly, when Heiko Vogel took over from Alexander Frei as Basel boss in February of last year, Calafiori saw more and more game time as a centre-back.

Bologna were watching with interest and snapped him up for just €4m (£3.4m/$4.3m) at the end of his one and only season in Switzerland, with Motta convinced that Calafiori was the kind of multi-talented player that could excel in his fluid 4-3-3 formation if moved into the middle on a permanent basis.

Basel, though, didn't make the same mistake as Roma. A 40 percent sell-on clause was included in the deal and, sooner or later, they're going to make a massive profit on a player that was attracting attention from some of the game's biggest clubs even before announcing himself to a wider audience with a stellar display in Italy's Euro 2024 opening-round win over Albania last Saturday.