There was a moment in March when Cristian Romero pulled off such an outrageous bit of defending that the mind went back to something similar from one of his predecessors at new club Tottenham Hotspur.
To that time when Ledley King somehow charged back to tackle Chelsea’s Arjen Robben 15 years ago despite the Dutchman seemingly having the freedom of White Hart Lane.
By popular demand, enjoy this incredible piece of defending from @LedleyKing v Chelsea… 👏 #COYS pic.twitter.com/vwc8W9aLjE
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) October 12, 2016
On this occasion, it was another attacker with Chelsea connections who was denied, as Romero raced towards his own goal at San Siro and, with perfect timing, slid in to dispossess Inter’s Romelu Lukaku just as the Belgian went to shoot.
Lukaku looks to be away as Romero gives chase…
…but the Atalanta defender eats up the yards, gets close enough to make a challenge…
…and slides in to divert the ball to safety
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Lukaku’s disbelieving, head-in-hands reaction says it all
This is what Spurs have signed in Romero, and it helps to explain why they are ultimately willing to spend around £43 million plus £4.3 million in add-ons and endure such tortuous negotiations with Atalanta. He joins on an initial season-long loan with an option to buy for a fee that would make Romero Tottenham’s second most expensive signing after Tanguy Ndombele two years ago. A five-year deal has already been agreed to kick in when the loan expires.
Convincing Romero himself was straightforward; Spurs’ new managing director of football Fabio Paratici, who also signed the defender for Juventus from Genoa two years ago, explained to him the club’s vision and desire to return to the Champions League (a competition Romero made seven appearances in last season and would have been in again next month if he’d stayed with a club who finished third in Serie A in May). The Athletic understands Romero also discussed the move with his international team-mate Giovani Lo Celso, who spoke highly of the club he joined two years ago. Spurs’ recent loan signing from Atalanta Pierluigi Gollini will of course be another familiar face to Romero.
So Spurs was an easy sell for Romero, but agreeing a price with Atalanta — a club known for holding firm when selling their players — has dragged on for a couple of weeks. They wanted to be sure that they had lined up a replacement before agreeing to the deal, and have now done so after reaching an agreement with Juventus over Merih Demiral.
Barcelona were interested in Romero as well — Lionel Messi is believed to have recommended his international team-mate to the club’s hierarchy — but their well-known financial issues scuppered any chance of a deal. Paratici would not be denied, not when it came to a player he knew so well and rates extremely highly, and when signing a centre-back to improve Tottenham’s shaky defence has been a priority from the day he was appointed in June.
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Paratici is not the only one to hold Romero in such high regard.
The 23-year-old is fresh from helping Argentina win the Copa America this summer — considered so important to the team that he was rushed back from injury for the final after sitting out the three previous games — and being named last season’s Serie A defender of the year (Yes, the same Serie A that Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci play in).
He is a rugged, aggressive, no-nonsense centre-back, but also someone who can get his head up and pick a pass and score the odd goal, too. While not the tallest for a centre-back at a haircut over 6ft, Romero is extremely physical and sharp at reading the game — even earning comparisons with the legendary, and relatively short for a centre-back at 5ft 9in, Fabio Cannavaro.
“He’s played in Italy for a few years and plays like an Italian defender,” says a source in Argentina. “He’s rugged and the culture there is famous for its defenders.”
Romero is still young, having turned 23 in late April, but when he plays has the weathered appearance of someone far more experienced — in the tradition of Argentinian centre-backs such as Roberto Ayala and Walter Samuel. Romero’s own dad even jokes that his son already looks about 30.
The Tottenham new boy also shares those compatriots’ uncompromising approach and familiarity with a card or two. Sent off in just his second game for Genoa in October 2018, across his three seasons in Italy he got a staggering 39 yellows and three reds in 102 games. He was substituted on several occasions last season for fear he would pick up a second booking.
But despite this ill-discipline, there are few more sought-after young centre-backs in Europe than the man known back home as “Cuti” — a nickname he was given as a child by his elder sister Aldana because he couldn’t say Cristian.
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When he was a bit older, aged 13, Cristian said that his dream was to “play in Europe and for the national team”.
A decade on, “Cuti” has achieved that dream, and then some.
This is how he has done it, and the kind of player Spurs have signed.
It should be said that, until the Copa America in Brazil this summer, Romero was far from a household name back home in Argentina. In fact, up until that tournament, even some experts there admitted they knew very little about him.
Through a combination of his unassuming character, the fact that attackers always have a much higher profile, and him coming from the tiny town of Villa Lago Rivadavia in the country’s interior, near the border with Chile, very little was known about Romero in his home country until this summer.
As a child, Romero was toughened up by playing football with his older brother and cousins. “He was the youngest but he defended himself,” Romero’s father Quito told Argentinian sports newspaper Ole in June. “He already liked to go out playing and had a lot of personality, like now, when he is 23 years old but looks 30.”
Gustavo Spallina, a former player and now a well-regarded scout for Cordoba club Belgrano was similarly struck by the young Romero.
“The first time I saw him, I realized that he was a spectacular defender,” Spallina said earlier this year. “He was very serious, he didn’t laugh at all and he had a lot of presence.” A 13-year-old Romero told Spallina earnestly that his dream was to “play in Europe and for the national team”.
Spallina convinced Belgrano to sign the youngster shortly after and having impressed there with his tenacity and aggression, he earned himself a move to Genoa in summer 2018, two months after turning 20.
Moving to the spiritual home of touch-tight, aggressive defending was an education for the talented but raw Romero. “Tactically it was a disaster when I arrived in Italy. In Genoa, I learned a lot,” Romero, who doesn’t speak a great deal publicly, has since admitted.
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He had to learn extremely quickly, as on his debut he was tasked with marking Cristiano Ronaldo, who had joined Juventus that summer. He acquitted himself well in a 1-1 draw in Turin, and despite the red card in his next match against Udinese had performed so consistently by the end of the season that he caught Juventus’s eye.
Paratici oversaw a transfer that cost Juventus around £17 million and instantly loaned the player back to Genoa, which is not uncommon in Italy. The following year, Romero was loaned to Atalanta with an option for the Bergamo club to buy at the end of it. They exercised that option immediately before loaning Romero to Spurs.
The season just gone at Atalanta gives us a good insight into the kind of player Tottenham are signing.
Positionally, as the graphic below shows, Romero spent the majority of his time (75 per cent) in the middle of a defensive back three, though he also played a bit as the right-side centre-back (24 per cent).
If new Spurs head coach Nuno Espirito Santo plays that system, he will slot into the centre of a back three. However, with Nuno expected to go with a back four, Romero will be part of a central defensive pairing. He is right-footed so will not solve Tottenham’s ongoing issue of the absence of a left-footed centre-back (other than left-back Ben Davies, who can play on the left of a back three).
As for his defensive partner, Spurs are keen to sell Davinson Sanchez and bring in another centre-back during this window.
Bologna’s Takehiro Tomiyasu, who can play as a central defender or at right-back, is expected to join after the culmination of the Olympic Games, where he has been representing defeated semi-finalists and tournament hosts Japan. If Tomiyasu plays right-back, it would leave Eric Dier, Joe Rodon and potentially Japhet Tanganga (who is subject to a loan bid from Galatasaray), plus any further new arrival, battling it out for the place alongside Romero.
To get a sense of Romero’s strengths and weaknesses, we can look at the data from smarterscout, which rates an individual’s ability in specific metrics out of 99 relative to other players in their position.
The next graphic illustrates that Romero excels in disrupting opposition attacks with his defensive intensity (86 out of 99) and ability to step in and win the ball (94/99).
These next images, from Atalanta’s 2-0 Champions League win away at Liverpool last November, are a good example of Romero’s impressive defensive numbers in action.
Spotting Jordan Henderson’s pass aimed for Diogo Jota, Romero steps forward…
…Jota had looked like the favourite to win the ball but Romero barges him out of the way and takes possession…
…with a tackle so clean it sets up an Atalanta counter-attack
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Romero is also comfortable being taken into the channels, something the slower Dier and now-departed Toby Alderweireld struggled with last season. Once there, Romero has the upper body strength to knock attackers off their stride.
And he loves a tackle, which partly explains why he picks up so many yellow cards. More often than not though, Romero gets his timing right (as in that Lukaku incident above).
This next example comes last November’s 1-1 home draw with Inter when Arsenal target Lautaro Martinez looked certain to score at the near post from close range.
Sensing that Matteo Darmian is going to be in a position to cross, Romero starts to track Martinez…
…and takes up a position that allows him to make the tackle without giving away a penalty
Romero not only stops Martinez from scoring but cleanly wins back possession…
…he then calmly strides out and passes to team-mate Hans Hateboer with his weaker left foot
The above was not an isolated incident while at Atalanta. Last season Romero averaged a combined 5.6 tackles and interceptions per 90 minutes in Serie A, the highest figure of any player in the division per Stats Perform, and the next graphic illustrates this impressive tackling.
Though it also shows that, not being the tallest, Romero is vulnerable when dealing with crosses. This also partly explains why he’s more comfortable playing in a back three.
Partly as a consequence of his tackling ability, Romero is viewed in Argentina as a pure defender — drawing comparisons with Ayala, who reached the 2000-01 Champions League final with Valencia and won 116 international caps. Ayala is now on Lionel Scaloni’s coaching staff for Argentina, so has worked directly with Romero.
Romero has also been compared to former Real Madrid and Spain captain Sergio Ramos for his aggressive style and strength in one-on-one situations. It would be fair to say as well that he has a disciplinary record that almost rivals Paris Saint-Germain new boy Ramos’s. It remains to be seen whether Romero can get to Ramos’s level, but there is a view in Italy that he could have a similarly transformative effect on the Spurs defence as Ruben Dias and Virgil van Dijk had at Manchester City and Liverpool respectively.
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Interestingly, returning to how he plays, the numbers suggest that stylistically the defender Romero is least similar to is Conor Coady — Nuno’s captain for his four seasons at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
In fairness, back threes in the Premier League are a little less common than on the continent, so there aren’t really any directly similar players to compare Romero to, given how aggressive he is as a centre-back in that system. It gives a sense though of how he likes to step out and play on the front foot. With the pace he has, as shown in the Lukaku example at the top of this piece, he knows he can drop back in if caught out of position.
Romero also has decent distribution, which will be needed with Alderweireld having moved on.
Looking again at Atalanta’s win at Anfield last season, he demonstrated his ability to step out and start attacks with a clip over the top.
Romero steps out of defence and plays a pass that dissects the Liverpool back line…
….Atalanta get in behind as a result and the move ends in a shot that hits the side netting
Generally though, Romero is judicious with when to play it forwards, typically keeping his passes short and out wide to the wing-backs (hence him registering a low score, 10 out of 99, for progressive passing on the pizza chart above).
But he does like to get forward, and registered two goals and two assists in Serie A last season — both very good for a defender.
His desire to not just defend is to his credit but can lead to him making the odd mistake and giving the ball away. “It is no coincidence that Juventus bought him. He has quality, although he sometimes makes risky decisions,“ his manager at Atalanta, Gian Piero Gasperini, said last season.
Despite his impressive performances in Italy, Romero was barely known in his homeland until this summer. That all changed at the Copa America, when he helped the national team win their first title major title in 28 years.
Romero picked up a knee injury in the group stage and looked as though he would miss the rest of the tournament. Instead, he came back for the final against Brazil and, lining up alongside Lo Celso, lasted 79 minutes before being substituted. The decision to play was ultimately his, and his performance in the final was typically fearless.
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“He just never seems to get nervous,” says Mariano Dayan, the general editor of Ole — the biggest sports publication in Argentina. “It’s not normal. Nothing fazes him. He asked to play in the Copa America final despite carrying an injury, that says it all.
“It’s also not normal in Argentina to come into the team so young as a defender. Compare with Nicolas Otamendi, who’s been in the team for years.”
The victory was particularly sweet for Romero after suffering the disappointment of being left out of the squad for the Under-20 World Cup in 2017.
Romero celebrated his country’s historic victory by returning to his hometown, where he has set up his own football school with an intake of more than 300 children. There, he could do what he most enjoys doing — relaxing with his family over a barbecue and a small fernet, a popular spirit in Cordoba.
His profile may have been raised after the Copa America but at heart he is still the shy boy his parents remember from his childhood; the eight-year-old his dad told was “going to be a crack (a star) and reach the top”.
Romero’s father Quito, who still has all the clippings and photos of Cristian playing as a child, said in June: “Obviously at home we always believed in him, but it is difficult to leave a club in the interior and establish yourself so fast in Europe. It is showing what we knew would happen, although I thought it would take a little longer… It’s all a dream.”
Romero appears to be a man in a hurry, and he’ll need to hit the ground running in north London and channel his inner Ledley again as Spurs look to him to help fix their leaky defence.
The fact he has already had both COVID-19 vaccinations and Italy is on the UK’s ‘amber list’ will mean he shouldn’t have to quarantine for five days upon his arrival, assuming he tests negative. That may give him an outside chance of making his debut against Manchester City in Tottenham’s season opener next weekend, a game where his presence in the back line would be most welcome.
(Photo: MB Media/Getty Images)