Today in Serie A – March 28, 1993: Francesco Totti Made His Debut at 17 | OneFootball

“Come on, coach, put the kid in!“, Sinisa Mihajlovic suggested to his gaffer Vujadin Boskov, hinting at a 17-year-old young lad with blonde hair and blue eyes sitting on Roma’s bench. It was March 28, 1993, and the Giallorossi were winning 2-0 at Brescia.

Those were not good times for Roma, who would end a disappointing 10th in the Serie A table after seeing their president Giuseppe Ciarrapico arrested on fraudulent bankruptcy charges. But that game at the Stadio Mario Rigamonti against the Rondinelle had taken a good turn thanks to Claudio Caniggia and Mihajlovic’s goals.

With only three minutes left to play, the job of the day was done and dusted. So, coach Boskov took his Serbian countryman’s suggestion and ordered the boy, who happened to be named Francesco Totti, to get ready:

“Come on, warm yourself up.”

Totti, who was a Primavera staple and had been aggregated to the senior team for the first time, was dumbfounded. As he would later recall in his autobiography, he thought that Boskov was talking to the much more experienced Roberto Muzzi. Instead, the Roma gaffer was talking to him, so much that, when a confused Totti took a bit more than necessary to get ready, Boskov lost it and barked:

“What’s up, Totti? Don’t you want to debut?”

He thus sped up and high-fived his teammate Ruggiero Rizzitelli as he took his place on the field. Totti managed to touch the ball only once on his debut day, protecting it near the corner just before referee Roberto Boggi would blow for full time.

That was the beginning of a story that would end 25 years, 619 games, and 250 goals later. Always wearing the red-and-yellow shirt of Roma.