Report: Roma Negotiating for Mateus Vital

The final weekend of the summer mercato is upon us, and a lot depends on Patrik Schick. Just the 13.7 million euro annual costs of Schick on the club’s yearly budget alone would pay the transfer fee and wages of some young prospect through the Trigoria doors. Should Roma manage to move those costs onto Red Bull Leipzig at any point this weekend, then that next young talent in line for a Roma shirt is reported to be Corinthians’ attacking midfielder Mateus Vital.

There isn’t much on the football side we can say about Vital, owing to the fact he’s got the most confusing highlights video we’ve seen in a long time (below).

One big positive of Vital’s game is that the Brazilian U-23 international looks almost as comfortable with his left foot as he does on his right. But we’re pretty sure he won’t be magically slowing down play to 8-16 frames per second in real life, each time Vital gets on the ball at the Stadio Olimpico. So take the video with a bigger grain of salt than usual.

Oh, and for the parts of the video where the screen goes monochrome-black-red and the EDM bass gets boosted... that means Mateus Vital has put the ball in the back of the net. In case that wasn’t clear enough.

Off the pitch, Vital has bulletproof motivation that he’s had to learn to build from the absolute ground up since he was nine years of age. When you’re talking about doing a ‘Year Zero’ on yourself, a personal rebuild doesn’t get more permeable to the fabric of your being than overcoming the sight of your mother getting gunned down and killed in front of you, as she picks you up from your evening football kickabout.

Since then, Vital had spend round-the-clock sessions with a psychologist while he continued his footballing development with formation club Vasco da Gama. At the very beginning of 2018, Vital moved on from Vasco to Corinthians for a 2 million euro fee and has since scored two goals against his former club (including in our feature picture above). The Brazilian youth-level call-ups never stopped either, and now Il Messaggero reports that Corinthians are openly shopping Vital on the market for 7-8 million euro fee as Vital’s club desperately need the money.

The last time Roma exploited the bad finances of a Brazilian club to take their prodigious talent away, it didn’t end well. The Gerson affair was a poor transfer mismanaged by Roma from very start to finish. Hopefully, this time, Roma can make good on Gianluca Petrachi and Paulo Fonseca’s combined pedigree with grooming and moulding Brazilian talent.

UPDATE: Roma are reported to have secured a verbal agreement with Mateus Vital overnight, and are officially negotiating with Corinthians today.

Gazzetta’s Nicolo Schira claims Roma are asking for an option to buy at 8-10 million while Corinthians are holding out for an obligation to buy. Which sounds like 100% made-up Hollywood bs from Schira. Bless him.

Whatever the details being hashed out, Vital could be flying to Rome by Monday.