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We haven't seen, heard, or even talked about Romulo all that much since he arrived from Hellas Verona this past August. There's a pretty good reason for that — injuries. Stupid, stupid injuries that have kept him sidelined for months and months and will continue to do so for the immediate future.
Yet, as the Brazilian-born midfielder/fullback recovers from surgery he underwent early last month, there's actually something that is Romulo-related. Although, it has nothing to do with when he's actually coming back to the field. We're still waiting for that piece of news.
Romulo has refused a return to Hellas Verona. The class of 1987 midfielder plied his trade for the Veneto club before joining Juventus this past summer. But he gave a firm no to the possibility of returning, seeing as he wants to break into Juventus' squad, after undergoing the first half of the reason riddled with injuries. Romulo's future remains black and white.
(Source: Gianluca Di Marzio)
To say the first six-plus months of his Juventus career have been anything but a complete struggle would probably be an understatement at this point. Romulo, a lot like Roberto Pereyra, was signed on loan with an option to buy and was expected to provide much-needed and extremely valuable depth behind the four central midfield mainstays. Unlike Pereyra, Romulo has barely played at all — in large part due to injury troubles that has kept him out for the majority of the season.
Through the first 20 Serie A games of the 2014-15 campaign, Romulo has played all of 97 minutes.
Ninety-seven, folks. That's just a mere 97 more minutes than Marco Motta, who is essentially seeing out the last year of his contract with Juventus by training with the squad and then sitting back at home each match day.
When you throw in the fact that Juventus are rumored to be very keen on bringing in on-loan midfielder Stefano Sturaro from Genoa, then I'd like to guess that the Juve management probably aren't banking on much from Romulo whenever he does return from his injury troubles. At least for the rest of this season, anyway. There's still that whole option-to-buy thing to deal with over the summer.
You'd think he'd actually have a decent shot to get that picked up if he's able to play, though. That's the first — and probably most important — step to complete at this point.
