AS Roma have completed the signing of Tottenham Hotspur’s Federico Fazio on a season-long loan with an option to buy at the end of it.
The fee of the loan will be of €1.2 million and the amount required to make the move permanent stands at €3.2 million, as the Italian club informed in a statement on Wednesday.
The 29-year-old spent the last six months on loan at Sevilla, the club where he played for the majority of his career, after joining from Ferrocarril Oeste in 2007. He spent seven successful years in Spain, where played 192 games, scoring 12 goals, and won the Europa League in his last season.
Tough time at Spurs for Fazio
In the summer of 2014 he moved to North London, but he could never adapt to the style of Premier League, and made only 14 Premier League appearances for Mauricio Pochettino’s side during his first season at the club.
The arrivals of Toby Alderweireld and Kevin Wimmer last season meant he had no space at all in the team for this term, hence the return to Spain in January.
This time however, things didn’t work out as well as in his previous tenure for the club. Despite winning the Europa League again, he played only six games during the whole spell (four in the league and two in the Europa League).
Fazio has also featured for Argentina's national side, winning the U20 World Cup in 2007 and the Olympic Gold medal in 2008, aside from being capped three times for the senior side.
Roma seeking for end to defensive problems
Roma had some trouble and bad luck with center backs in recent years and will hope Fazio becomes a solution. Medhi Benatia and Leonardo Castan formed one of the best center back pairings in Serie A in 2013 and 2014, but the former left for Bayern Munich (and recently joined Juventus) and the latter was diagnosed with Cavernoma and was sidelined for months before being loaned to Empoli.
Antonio Rudiger had a very strong performance last season but injured himself during the preparations for the Euros in France and will miss a big part of next season.