Riccardo Calafiori has reopened the door to a future return to Roma, saying he has "unfinished business" with the club where he grew up and would like to go back "sooner or later." The Arsenal defender made the comments ahead of Saturday’s Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain, offering a rare public glimpse of where his heart still sits while his club chase a historic double.
Calafiori, 24, said he is happy at Arsenal now, and that much is clear from the way Mikel Arteta has built him into a vital part of the side since his arrival. But he also made plain that Roma never really left him. "I’m happy here now, but I’ve left some unfinished business with Roma. I barely played for that team when I was very young. I’d like to return. Not right away, but sooner or later," he said.
The timing matters because Arsenal are 90 minutes away from a landmark season and Calafiori is part of the squad trying to finish it. The Premier League title is already secured, and Arteta views the Italy international as a structural piece of the team at the Emirates. Saturday’s final against PSG is the next test, and one of the club’s most important defenders has now spoken openly about a future that still includes another shirt.
That future is not immediate. Calafiori has settled in London and the evidence of that runs through his own words. He said he is always rooting for Roma and hopes they can get back to the level he remembers as a boy. He also said he has kept close to several former teammates, naming Bryan Cristante, Gianluca Mancini and Lorenzo Pellegrini, and added that some Roma players even wrote to him about his birthday. The connection, in his telling, was never broken.
There is the friction. Calafiori is an Arsenal player, fresh off a title and preparing for one of the biggest nights of the season, yet he is also speaking like someone who has not closed the book on Rome. For now, that leaves Arsenal holding a defender who is central to their present while Roma remains a future possibility he has put in words himself. When that return might happen is still unanswered, but Calafiori has made clear he intends to leave the door open.
