Robinio Vaz is only 19. He won’t turn 20 until February. He has barely a full season of senior football under his belt. Yet the teenage Frenchman is already carrying the expectations that come with his €25 million price tag. Most teenagers stay in the “honorable mention” section of our annual youth rankings for quite some time, and the fact that Vaz is already at #7 is an indicator of both his potential and the pressure on him to perform in the next few seasons.
Vaz has the talent to reach the heights
his transfer fee suggests. The question for this season is whether Roma can give him the one thing young strikers need more than anything else to get to those heights: minutes. With Santiago Castro being given the #9 kit after a reported €35 million transfer from Bologna, that question has become considerably more complicated, at least for the present moment.
Number Seven: Robinio Vaz
Age: 19
Position: Striker
Shades of: A skinny Romelu Lukaku, Victor Osimhen, Jean-Pierre Papin
Who Is He?
Vaz was born north of Paris in Mantes-la-Jolie, France; he began his development with local clubs Mantes and FC Mantois 78 before eventually moving out of the Paris suburbs and to Sochaux for the last bit of his shockingly short time as an academy player. After that, Marseille came calling in 2024, and Vaz’s rise continued; he made his senior debut for Marseille in January 2025 and quickly established himself as a fixture in Roberto De Zerbi’s plans, impressing in both his Ligue 1 and Champions League debuts before Roma came calling.
By the time the Giallorossi signed him in January 2026, Vaz had made 22 appearances for Marseille across all competitions, scoring four goals. Roma ultimately committed to the teenager on a deal worth a reported €25 million, handing him a contract through 2030.
Once he put on a Roma kit, Vaz’s first half-season in the capital was predictably uneven. Vaz made 12 Serie A appearances, all from the bench, totaling just 205 minutes and scoring once. That’s not enough time to make any definitive judgments about a teenager who was dropped into a new country and a new tactical environment halfway through the season, but it’s a sign that development is the name of the game for Vaz for the foreseeable future.
What Can He Do?
Simply put: Vaz is excellent at making defenders uncomfortable. He’s a quick, aggressive, direct forward who is seemingly incapable of accepting that a loose ball is loose. At his best, Vaz chases down everything, runs behind defenders, attacks space and tries to turn every half-chance into a potential scoring opportunity. You can tell from his time with Roma just how aggressive he is as a striker; in some ways, it feels like part of his project for the next year is to become slightly more measured.
With that in mind, he’s nothing close to the finished product. In particular, Vaz’s decision-making needs refinement, his link-up play can be inconsistent and he has nowhere near the experience necessary to be entrusted with leading a Champions League-caliber attack for an entire season.
Still, the raw materials are obvious, and that’s why Roma spent €25 million on him in the first place.
What Can He Become?
Honestly, maybe a world-beater. It’s not overhyping Vaz to say that he is one of the most talented players on this list despite his spot at #7. He’s likely got four more years to feature on this list, and you can be sure that unless something goes wrong or he’s transferred away permanently, he will continue to be a fixture of these rankings.
Even given that high ceiling, there is a huge difference between being talented and becoming the player Romanisti believe you can become. Since I started writing for Chiesa di Totti, Roma has had dozens of young strikers with world-beater potential who became next to nothing compared to those potential heights. With that in mind, at this stage of Vaz’s career, the most important thing for him is that he soaks up as many minutes as possible. Potential becomes ability through repetition, no matter whether you’re working as a striker or any other role.
That’s where things get complicated. There’s no doubt that after his superstar star for the Giallorossi this spring, Donyell Malen will be at the heart of Gian Piero Gasperini’s plans for Roma’s attack this season. Now that the club has added Santiago Castro, there’s yet another intriguing young striker in Roma’s stable with high potential. The main difference is that Castro cost more, has more experience, and is ready to be a major piece of the puzzle now. That means there’s at a minimum two excellent strikers standing between Vaz and consistent minutes in a Roma kit, at least for the time being.
There’s nothing wrong with Roma signing Castro, and I’m quite excited by that transfer. Castro fills a more immediate need than Vaz, and the potential for linkup play when he’s playing with his compatriots Matías Soulé and Paulo Dybala up front is scintillating.
But what of Vaz? Roma could keep him around and hope the fixture congestion and injuries that playing in three competitions provides translates into sufficient opportunities. With Serie A, the Champions League and the domestic cups on the schedule, there should theoretically be plenty of games to go around.
At the same time, “there should be” and “there will be” are two very different things, particularly under a coach like Gian Piero Gasperini, who is often stubborn when it comes to giving younger players a real shot. If Vaz is going to spend another season coming off the bench for fifteen minutes at a time, I’m not sure that’s the best outcome for anyone.
On the other hand, a loan could be tremendously beneficial for both the Giallorossi and Vaz. If Tony D’Amico can find a Serie A club (maybe De Rossi’s Genoa?) that can promise Vaz meaningful minutes over the course of the season, letting him learn how to deal with center-backs who want nothing more than to make him miserable, that’d be a great introduction to what’s necessary to succeed in top flight football for the long term. If Vaz can score some goals, miss some chances, make mistakes, recover from them and figure out what kind of striker he wants to become, that will be how the Frenchman can become a superstar.
Vaz is at an age when that development matters most. There is no shame in sending a 19-year-old striker away for a year, or in that 19-year-old striker being “a year or two away” from stardom. Ask Harry Kane whether it’s okay to go out on loan before returning to your home club and becoming a star striker. If Roma genuinely believe Vaz can become that superstar (and there’s little reason to think he can’t), they should be obsessed with finding the environment that gives him the best chance of doing so. In my mind, the worst-case scenario is that Vaz sits on Roma’s bench, plays 200-400 minutes, and spends another year as a prospect without actually becoming a better footballer. That kind of trajectory is all too common in Serie A football these days, but compared to a free academy player rotting on the bench, a pricey striker prospect doing so verges on financial malpractice.
Vaz’s performances for Roma this spring hinted that it was only a matter of time before he would become a starting striker for a top-flight club. It’s just a question of whether Roma gives the Frenchman the runway to do so, either at the Olimpico or (more likely, in my book) elsewhere.
