Fabrizio Romano: Here We Go.
Football is the most viewed sport in the world, and transfers are an exciting way for teams to bolster their squads.
Enter Fabrizio Romano, an Italian journalist who has eclipsed the entire market of transfers. There’s not one deal that goes by that isn’t rubber stamped by him. His renowned tagline: ‘Here We Go!’ generates hype and media frenzies, forming this tag into a worldwide recognised brand and acting as the last step before official club confirmation. When Fabrizio posts his tag, the football world doesn’t just listen, it celebrates.
To be a successful ‘insider’ you must be able to reach data that others cannot. His work focuses on building relationships with clubs, agents, and intermediaries. As any journalist will tell you, you need credible sources to post a story. Fabrizio prides himself on not being the first to break a potential story, but the first to break a confirmed finalised deal. His focus is on fact-checking, being neutral and respecting all involved in a deal — so that he can break stories quickly, whilst satisfying all parties.
Fabrizio is never separated from his phone. He utilises connectivity to uncover and report. Fabrizio takes active journalism to the next level. In transfer windows, his main priority is to only gather and report correct news. To achieve this he sacrifices sleep, only achieving 5 hours between 5am and 10am daily, whilst making a minimum of 50 phone calls per day and/or visiting hotels or anywhere agents may be to capture information.
Fabrizio’s main online target is to inform the fans: producing regular, quality content in addition with ways for fans to get involved and easily understand. Broadcasting information to inspire online engagement, notably though apps such as: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch and Apple Podcasts.
Fabrizio is very popular, he boasts 6.1 million and 6.9 million followers on Instagram and Twitter respectively, gained from continued accurate announcements using ‘Here We Go’. Fabrizio also uses Twitch and ‘squad streams’ to allow fans to monitor deals as they happen, utilising fan involvement. One example is shown through the 31st of August 2021/transfer deadline day, where deals such as ‘Luuk De Jong to Barcelona’ were broken live on Twitch. To summarise the previous weeks dealings and make sure fans have not missed anything, Fabrizio created the ‘Here We Go Podcast’.
Fabrizio could be detailed as a ‘content creator’; he uses his online presence to post and engage with fans. He has collaborated with players and clubs to aid their announcement videos, eg, Bruno Guimaraes applied Fabrizio’s ‘Here We Go’ tag in a video confirming his transfer to Newcastle United. Working with other content creators, eg Tiktok’s second most liked creator ‘Khaby Lame’, he promotes both content and merchandise to increase fan activity.
As Donald Trump’s unofficial presidential quotation of “Fake News” suggests, the world has been infiltrated by falsified stories generated for financial gain by reporters. The appeal to Fabrizio is that he does not speculate. If Fabrizio posts, he is 100% sure on the outcome, making him the most accurate ‘football insider’.
