Here are our three.

Sort of. Two and an apprentice, anyway.

The guy in the distance is, I believe, #75 Atanas Eliyanov Kehayov (an under 19 goalkeeper for Roma) who I mentioned in image 0579. He did not play.

The guy doing the kicking is Simone Farelli, the goalkeeping coach.

The guy in goal at the moment is the 22 year old Pietro Boer (#63), our nominal third keeper and de facto backup goalkeeper. He's from Mestre, which is up around Venezia, but on the mainland. He doesn't appear to have made any Serie A appearances yet which would be surprising were it not for the third part of this tale, which is still to come. He was in the box for the second half of this match.

The guy banging the ball into his head in the foreground is 24 year old Mile Svilar (#99) from Belgium. Well, sort of. He was born in Antwerp and played in every Belgium International team from U15 to U21.

However since his parents are Serbian he has dual citizenship, and he switched to Serbia as an adult. He played for them in 2021 but not since, though he reportedly turned down a call up in early 2024. This greatly hacked off the Serbia manager Dragan Stojković who indicated that he won't be asked again.

He is our nominal backup goalkeeper and de facto primary goalkeeper, who was in the box for the first half of this match. He arrived in Roma in 2022 after playing with Portuguese club (you DO surprise me!) Benfica.

Our nominal #1 keeper, the 36 year old, Portuguese-born Rui Patricio (who is in his country's squad as a goalkeeper) arrived in Roma a year earlier. (Albeit with Wolverhampton Wolves having been a stopping off point on the way.) Of course we ended up with a Portuguese national keeper; José Mourinho was in charge at the time, after all.

The problem was this; Patricio obviously had the skills to be a national keeper. But... he was ageing. While he still had flashes of brilliance the consensus was that his powers were fading, and fading rapidly. He's married to a sexologist (no, seriously, she has qualifications and everything) which may be... draining, shall we say... for a 36 year old. But hey, that's just a theory. He's still regularly in the Portugal squad, and retains the #1 jersey, but has not been a starter since 2023 other than in a friendly against Sweden in March 2024. (And as far as I can see he only started in friendlies in 2023 as well.) It's interesting to see his expected market value graph on Transfermarkt.com too; it's like a landslide, from €20M in 2019 to €1M in June 2024.

As early as August 2023 there was a thread on Reddit titled "Rui Patricio needs to be replaced ASAP". This coincided with an absolute shocker of a start to our 2023/24 season; a 2 all draw against Salernitana (which finished at the bottom of the table and were relegated) at home, no less, then a 2-1 loss to Verona, then another 2-1 loss to AC Milan (again at home); the consensus was that a lot of the blame for this came back to goals conceded. The Portuguese Connection protected him and kept him in the goal square, but then in January 2024 Mourinho was sacked. Patricio found himself on the bench for the first time in the year for the 14 January away match against AC Milan (which we lost), so he couldn't be blamed for that one. He stayed another 4 matches until we went down 4-2 against Inter at home... and that one was a different story, especially as we had the lead at half time. He was benched for the following match and hasn't played since.

And THAT is how it's possible for your de facto backup keeper (Boer) not to have played yet, because your (new) de facto prime keeper has only been so for 14 matches.

Patricio's contract expires this year, and he's walking as a free agent. We'll get none of that €11 million back from selling him, because I very much doubt we could find a buyer.

And so, the keeper is dead, long live the keeper!

Unusually for Roma, it's nice to have a player who is both capable AND young.