Are Lucas Vazquez and Roma a Match Made in Transfer Heaven?

Roma and Real Madrid seem to cross paths every few years or so. In addition to the inane International Champions Cup, the two squads seemingly meet the Champions League basis every few years, but it doesn’t stop there. From the days of Cicinho and Julio Baptista to Mateo Kovacic, Keylor Navas and even Nacho, Roma is always linked to Madrid’s spare parts, serving as a veritable layover for wayward Galacticos to resurrect their careers. While these rumors seldom come to fruition, I do understand the links; Roma isn’t that much of a step down from Madrid, yet they aren’t stacked three deep at every position, so for the players in question, it is a path towards more playing time and eventually a more lucrative pay day with another club.

The want away Madridista in question this time is Lucas Vazquez, a 27-year-old Spanish winger who has found consistent playing time hard to come by since leaving Espanyol several years ago. Still, in that somewhat limited playing time, Vazquez has been quite effective, scoring four goals and dishing out seven assists in roughly 1,600 league minutes last season.

However, even with Ronaldo’s absence, Vazquez has been on the outside looking in thus far, garnering only 37 minutes of action. This has, naturally, led to questions about his future. At 27, Vazquez’s prime years are disappearing faster than Capri Sun in your local elementary cafagymatorium, so it’s not hard to understand why he might think about leaving the current Kings of Europe.

While Vazquez isn’t the much ballyhooed inverted right winger we’ve been talking about since EDF signed on the dotted line last summer, he is capable of playing on either wing and even in midfield, so there are no shortage of ways in which he could be deployed. However, if Roma did indeed make this move in January, it’s only right to question when he’d play.

Even without that inverted winger, Roma is pretty well stocked on the wings, so unless they view Vazquez as an attacking midfielder, we can only assume one of Diego Perotti or Stephan El Shaarawy will be ushered out of the Eternal City.

Of course, it’s only September, so you can rest assured Vazquez won’t be the last winger lined up for a winter move.