It was November 24, 2005, and Ricardo Faty’s life was about to change forever. Three years after leaving the Parisian suburbs for Strasbourg, Faty was finally making his mark at the professional level, stealing the show in a 1-1 draw against Roma in the UEFA Cup.
That’s why Roma decided to sign him in the summer following Strasbourg’s relegation, with Faty making 15 appearances and helping them win their first trophy in six years – the 2006/07 Coppa Italia – but nevertheless unable to beat out the likes of Daniele De Rossi, Simone Perotta, and David Pizarro for a starting spot.
Desperate for regular minutes, Faty joined Bayer Leverkusen on a two-year loan, making just three appearances during his time in Germany, before returning to France and joining Nantes.
After helping Nantes achieve promotion, Faty then suffered relegation before returning to Roma playing 11 times across the 2009/10 season, before starting a new adventure with Greek outfit Aris Salonica.
He then decided to return to Ligue 1 and join AC Ajaccio in 2012 – the same year he switched from France to Senegal and played five times for the latter’s senior national team. After a season with Belgian side Standard Liége, Faty then played for Turkish sides Bursaspor and MKE Ankaragücü from 2015 to 2020, before heading back to Italy and spending a brief sojourn at Serie B since Reggina.
After hanging up his boots in 2023 following a swan song with French fourth-tier C’Chartres Football, Faty has balanced his time between raising his three daughters in Paris, serving as a pundit for major French television outlets, watching his beloved Roma on the TV, and coaching the Greater Paris’ region’s next top boys and girls at INF Clairefontaine – the same place where he started out a quarter-century ago.
Get Italian Football News spoke to Faty about a number of topics, including:
Talk to me a little bit about your relationship with Luciano Spalletti. Obviously, he signed you for Roma, he’s done quite well with teams like Napoli…how highly do you rate him amongst the game’s best coaches?
Faty: “For me, he’s one of the greatest…he was one of the best coaches from the 2010s. It’s normal that a lot of people remember José Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, and Roberto Mancini from the 2010s, but Spalletti also had a big part in that because he’s the one who brought Roma to the top again in the 2000s. Okay, maybe his time at Inter wasn’t that nice of an experience, but he brought back the Scudetto to Napoli, which is a very big achievement here in Italy. He’s a nice coach with a good sense of tactics, and a very Italian style to management, very theatrical, everything like that. It’s a huge one for me, it’s one of the greatest: maybe Spalletti is underrated in the coaching world, because his name doesn’t get mentioned a lot, but he’s great, and we’ve always had a great relationship together.”
While Spalletti is now coaching Juventus, Gian Piero Gasperini is looking to lead Roma back to the UEFA Champions League. What have you made of Gasperini’s time at Roma so far?
Faty: “To be honest with you, I’m a bit confused from this season, because I was enthusiastic about the appointment. I like Gasperini; he was chosen by Claudio Ranieri, and he’s a nice coach with a nice reputation. Maybe they’ve managed to win some good games, but they can’t beat the big guys. They can’t, they just can’t, and that’s the thing that’s annoying me a bit. This team is missing some things, like a world-class striker and also someone with more creativity.”
“We rely on Paulo Dybala, but Dybala is always injured, and his form isn’t that good…maybe with a prime Dybala, we could have done much better. I have ambivalent feelings: I like what I see sometimes, and sometimes I hate what I see, so I can’t be happy.”
Lastly, what was it like going back to Italy and enjoy a brief spell at Reggina? Did that feel like the perfect full-circle moment for you?
Faty: “I liked it, but it was a mess, because when I was in Italy, I didn’t expect this offer from Regina. They called me because they did some research and wanted an experienced player for Serie B, so they reached out to me. I thought, ‘Okay, for a last dance, why not? Why not try to go to Serie A with that team?’ I loved Italy, so it was really nice to go to Calabria in the south, but after a month, I got a really bad injury: I tore my adductor. I missed over 7 months, and when I came back for my second season, everything had changed.”
“There was a new president, a new coach, and I was considered to be a problem because I had one of the biggest salaries in the entire team, but I couldn’t leave because when you go to Italy, you need to stay for two years for the taxes and everything. I couldn’t leave, so I was stuck, and then they wanted to loan me out to Serie D, and I said, ‘No, I want to stay to fight for my place here.’ But it was too late, because new players and a new coach came, and the guy who brought me left, so it was kind of difficult.”
“But I had a good time there, because I was nice with people, and people were nice with me. I think that they had the potential to reach Serie A, around the same time that other teams like Crotone, Salernitana, Cremonese, were reaching Serie A. I thought that Reggina could make it, but they made a lot of mistakes, and they ended up going bankrupt and are now playing in Serie D. You can see throughout my career, I wasn’t so lucky with my clubs, because a lot of them didn’t have professional management. But it’s like that, it is what it is, this is the career that I decided to have.”