Over the past five years, Fabrizio Romano has established himself as one of the biggest names in the football transfer industry.
Having begun his career as a journalist with Sky Sports Italy, Romano began working exclusively on transfers after he played a pivotal role in breaking the news of then-Barcelona youth player Mauro Icardi’s exit back in 2011.
Since then, the Italian has developed his own list of contacts within the footballing world with agents, club officials and other intermediaries while also working as a reporter for reputed media outlets such as the Guardian.
The recent years have seen Romano establish himself as one of the ‘most trusted’ sources for transfer news with the 29-year-old breaking exclusive stories with his trademark ‘Here We Go’ confirmations.
But the last couple of years has seen Romano face backlash for a few misreports. For instance, the Italian journalist reported confidently that Leo Messi would stay at Barca however, the Argentine ended up leaving for PSG earlier last year.
Moreover, the transfer expert has also faced stiff competition from other journalists such as British reporter David Ornstein who has been equally adept at breaking transfer stories, sometimes even beating Romano to it.
This has resulted in football fans pitting the two journalists against one another in true Messi vs Ronaldo fashion and has also led to allegations of Romano being a ‘tap-in merchant’ whenever he comes second best at breaking a story.
After facing such slander from fans on Twitter, it looks like Romano has finally acknowledged these comments as the Italian touched upon it while speaking in an interview with FTBL.
“I think sometimes it is funny to see how people without a face, without a name (online), are criticising you. Sometimes I text them in private and I say ‘why are you saying that.’ Maybe you don’t like me, it’s fine. As Mourinho said, even Jesus Christ was not appreciated by everyone, so it is normal if you have some haters around,” retorted Romano with a touch of humour.
The transfer guru also touched upon how such comments are commonly found only on Twitter and not anywhere else online.
“I think this is part of Twitter, especially because on other platforms like Twitch or Instagram it’s not like that. On Twitter, there is this kind of people who like to joke on your work but I think it’s something normal and I have fun with them in private (chats) sometimes.”
It is certainly true that Romano has been responding to ‘tap-in merchant’ calls online as the journalist has been spotted giving back a taste of the same medicine through his replies.
While it is certainly nice to see that Romano has been able to find the funny side with the Twitter attacks, despite the ‘tap-in merchant’ allegations football fans continue to await dearly for the ‘Here We Go’ confirmation from the journalist for any transfer news.
The Italian’s reliability in the field continues to be his biggest strength and it looks like nobody will be able to take that away from him, especially through a few mean tweets.
