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| After a disappointing first season, the forward is now enjoying a staggering purple patch with the Italians Getty |
When Edin Dzeko left Manchester City for Roma in 2015, his departure barely caused a ripple in England. Under Manuel Pellegrini he had become a peripheral figure, and the Italian side were only asked to pay £8m, pocket change by modern football standards, for the Bosnian centre-forward.
Now, less than two years later, City's forgotten man is Serie A's joint top-scorer. He has 25 goals in 29 starts, more than Gonzalo Higuain, Mauro Icardi, Ciro Immobile and Pablo Dybala. Only Andrea Belotti, the great hope of Italian football and £84m target for Manchester United, can match him. He has 35 in all competitions, a single season club record already. Not bad for a 31-year-old cast aside after falling behind Wilfried Bony in the City pecking order.
For a striker of that vintage to be heading for the best year of his career, at a time when athleticism is valued more than any other, is remarkable. But Dzeko in part puts his success down to his age – or, perhaps more accurately, his experience. Zlatan Ibrahimovic recently spoke about knowing, as an older player, not to 'waste' energy, to be smarter about movement, and Dzeko agrees.
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| Dzeko has scored 35 goals in all competitions this season (Getty) |
“I'm not a boy anymore,” Dzeko tells The Independent . “I can't run maybe like I could ten years ago...you feel different. I'm older, but I'm much [more] clever, because I have so many games behind me. For some balls that I went like crazy for at 21-years-old, maybe this time I wouldn't go for, because you could get injured. When you're a young boy, you don't think, you just go for it. When you have more experience, you have to play more with your head.”
Being smarter is not the only reason for Dzeko's record, which is even more remarkable given that last season he scored just eight times in Serie A and was broadly regarded as a flop. He credits something as simple as having a full pre-season with his teammates (he arrived from Manchester with the 2015/16 campaign already under way) as a key factor, but also the Roma team is set up to get the best from him. “We're playing very attacking football with some great players,” he says, “so they make it easier for me to score. Because the team is playing for me, I get a lot of good service.”
