The 16-year-old scored a few seconds after entering the pitch for the first time with Roma: “With Gasperini I learned a lot”. Dad Antonino: “We are all very excited, now we have to continue working”
Sixteen years old, a few steps away from seventeen which he will turn on February 10th. Antonio Arena enters Roma’s history with a goal that smells of an emblematic date despite the final defeat. And he does it a few seconds after entering the field accompanied by the comforting applause of an almost resigned Olimpico. And instead Arena explodes the stadium that until now he had only seen on television and on a few occasions on the bench, before the final bitterness and a near doubling. He did it in front of his father Antonino present in the stands as he has been since his debut at Ucchino Football in Australia, then with Western Sydney Wanderers and finally at Pescara: “We are all very excited, now we have to continue working. We want him to continue collecting this type of experience. He is young and still has to grow” he said after the match.
head on shoulders
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“This is a beautiful moment, I felt a little nervous but I just thought about playing. Wesley made a nice cross and I scored straight away. I won’t forget this evening”, says the Italian-Australian emotionally at the end of the match. The thanks of the class of 2009 goes above all to Gasperini: “I played 4 games on the bench with him and some training. They are really hard but I have already learned a lot. I want to continue working and I hope to continue like this. My mind remains the same, nothing changes after today’s goal. I still miss him a lot.”
Sign of maturity. He also has it when there is an idol to point out: “It’s Ronaldo ‘The Phenomenon’, he was a complete player. I like watching many strikers to learn, but he was the best. Who am I like? I like attacking depth but I want to be myself and become stronger and stronger.”
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