Evan Ferguson is stepping into a whole new world.

The Stadio Olimpico does not look, sound or feel like the Amex Stadium. Few fanbases demand as much from their players as they do at Roma.  Few are as passionate either, something Ferguson got a taste of when he was mobbed at Ciampino Airport on his arrival.  

Serie A’s famously minute attention to tactical detail and well-drilled defences will provide an altogether new challenge for the young Irishman as he looks to rediscover his best form after a difficult two years.    

Ferguson is making history as the first Irish player to pull on the Giallorossi shirt, too. And it has been a fine fit so far – he has six goals in three friendly matches ahead of Saturday’s clash with Lens.

But while this 20-year-old’s step into the Serie A spotlight is packed full of firsts, his arrival is the opening line to what is just the latest chapter in a long and colourful story of Irish players in Italy.

THE TRAILBLAZER

The first Irishman to definitely play in Serie A – little is known of mysterious potential turn-of-the-century forerunner Matts Kunding – was Paddy Sloan, who became a trailblazer when he swapped Sheffield United for AC Milan in 1948.  

The man from Armagh was a dual Irish international who featured for both the IFA and FAI XIs during a career that took him through a huge number of clubs, from Manchester United to Rabat Ajax, Arsenal to Peterborough.

His time in Italy lasted just three years. But, in characteristically journeyman fashion, Sloan packed a lot in by representing four clubs in that time: Milan, Torino, Udinese and Brescia.

Supposedly nicknamed ‘The Tiger’ for his tenacious displays, Sloan scored nine goals for the Rossoneri in 1948-49, playing alongside legendary striker Gunnar Nordahl as they finished third in Serie A behind the Grande Torino and Inter.

That Scudetto proved to be Toro’s last before the Superga air disaster tragically killed almost their entire squad, after which Sloan had a brief three-month spell with the Granata before dropping into Serie B with Udinese.

Sloan’s arrival helped spur the Zebrette towards promotion as they finished second, one point behind champions Napoli, the Irishman netting seven goals in a season described by the club itself as a roaring success, but he packed his bags again at the end of the year to head west for Brescia. In Lombardy, Sloan again found the net seven times in Serie B as Brescia finished in mid-table, before his Italian adventure ended in 1951 when Norwich City came calling.

THE GOAT

Liam Brady is without doubt the best-known and most successful Irish import in Serie A history. The Dubliner spent seven years on the peninsula, pulling on the shirts of Juventus, Sampdoria, Inter and Ascoli.

The attacking midfielder was considered an Arsenal great by the time he landed in Turin for £500,000 in 1980, and he lived up to the hype in the Bianconeri’s famous No 10 shirt as he inspired the club to back-to-back titles, scoring the Scudetto-sealing penalty against Catanzaro in 1981-82 that earned Juve their 20th title and second star.

Michel Platini’s arrival then saw him bumped out the door due to the limit on foreign players, but Brady’s success continued at Samp, where he teamed up with English striker Trevor Francis, before spending another couple of years at San Siro alongside the great Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.    

Brady’s final year in Italian football with Ascoli wasn’t so memorable, but his legacy remains by far the most influential of any Irishman to step foot on Italian shores.

When he returned to the Marassi in 2021, Brady was given a hero’s welcome by the Sampdoria supporters as he was presented with a shirt bearing his name and number.

Reflecting on his former partnership with Francis in Liguria, Brady said: “I knew Trevor from England… he was truly an English football star. When (club owner Paolo) Mantovani told me that Francis was coming to Sampdoria, I didn’t believe him.

“I had been in Italy for a few years, so I helped him understand the language, the lifestyle, the football and he was one of the best strikers I have ever played with.”

By the time he left Italy, Brady had been nominated for the Ballon d’Or four times, finishing in the top 10 in both of his years at Juventus.

THE FLOPS

Robbie Keane is arguably the most celebrated Irish striker of the 21st century, yet his spell at Inter is often forgotten, coming so early in his celebrated career and ending so quickly.

The Nerazzurri forked out £13million to bring the 20-year-old from Coventry City in the summer of 2000. “It’s a nice lifestyle in Milan, but I’m not going over there for the lifestyle,” Keane insisted at the time.

However, his hopes of making an impact on the pitch were soon brought crashing down. Ronaldo, Christian Vieri, Ivan Zamorano, Alvaro Recoba and Hakan Sukur were all fighting for places in the Inter attack when Keane arrived. That is what you might describe as stiff competition.

Inter’s decision to splash out so much on a relatively untested Irish youngster was therefore met with scepticism in some quarters and reported as a “major risk” at the time.

Injuries to Ronaldo and Vieri helped Keane get his first minutes in a star-studded squad, but it proved to be a tumultuous season for the club.

Coach Marcello Lippi was sacked in October after they had been dumped out of the Champions League in the qualifying rounds by Helsingborg. When successor Marco Tardelli proved reluctant to play Keane, things unravelled quickly. The Irishman was sent back to England with Leeds United in December on an initial loan move, which later became permanent.

Keane’s Italian spell lasted just six months, and he failed to score a Serie A goal. He did produce a lovely, lobbed finish against Lazio in the Supercoppa Italiana – celebrated with a trademark cartwheel – but even then, the goal ultimately wasn’t enough to avoid a 4-3 defeat.

Keane was magnanimous about the experience when reflecting on it after his move to Leeds. “I wanted it to work there, and things were going well under Mr Lippi, but we all know change and when the new manager came in, he had his own ideas,” he said.

“I’ve nothing against Mr Tardelli. He is a great man and a great manager, but unfortunately, I just didn’t figure in his plans… I went over to Italy to be a star and unfortunately it didn’t work out for me.”

Another, lesser-known, Irishman in Italian football is Ronnie O’Brien, the former Juventus midfielder who spent three years in Turin without making a single Serie A appearance.

After joining Carlo Ancelotti’s Bianconeri in 1999 from Middlesbrough, O’Brien was sent on a series of loans before leaving in 2002 and heading across the Atlantic to pull on the shirts of FC Dallas, Toronto and San Jose Earthquakes.

O’Brien later became the bizarre centre of attention when a public effort to hijack a Time magazine vote for Person of the Century saw him surge into contention alongside the likes of Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and eventual winner Albert Einstein. Time eventually had to shut down the poll and outlaw ‘whimsical candidates’ as a result.

As for his time at Juve, a grainy compilation of his one substitute appearance, towards the end of an Intertoto Cup game against Rostov that Juve led 5-1, is the sum total of O’Brien’s slightly baffling legacy.

THE NEW GENERATION

You could throw a blanket over the Irishmen to star in Serie A up until the 2020s.

But in the last five years, since Brexit complicated the well-worn path to the UK for aspiring young Republic of Ireland footballers, a wave of talent has headed for the sun and spritz of the peninsula instead.

The likes of Festy Ebosele, Cathal Heffernan and Aaron Connolly have been and gone, having spells at Udinese, Milan and Venezia respectively, but there are still several Irish youngsters without the name Ferguson who are plying their trade in Italian football.

Among them is Kevin Zefi, a 20-year-old winger who joined Inter from Shamrock Rovers in 2021 and last year joined Roma’s Primavera team. Zefi will now hope he gets the chance to play first-team football alongside his compatriot in the capital, but thus far he has exclusively played at youth level.

Zefi was the first to blaze the trail for the current crop and was followed by a series of others. At Como, 18-year-old attacking midfielder Naj Razi is on the books while Sligo-born striker Liam Kerrigan made14 appearances and scored one Serie B goal after arriving in 2022.

Torino’s Senan Mullen joined the Granata’s youth ranks from Dundalk last year and was a mainstay of the Primavera side last season, making 37 appearances and warming the bench in a February Serie A win over Milan too. The centre-back will hope 2025-26 can bring his breakthrough under new boss Marco Baroni.  

James Abankwah has been shipped out on loan several times since joining Udinese in 2022, including this term to Watford, but remains a Zebrette player, while there is Irish involvement in the lower leagues too, where Ed McJannet will this season represent Ternana on loan from Lecce. Justin Ferizaj was on Frosinone’s books before returning to Ireland with Bray Wanderers.

The trend has spread to the women’s game too, where the likes of Louise Quinn, Niamh Farrelly and Megan Connolly (currently at Lazio) have all graced Serie A Femminile pitches in recent years.

Much like their Celtic counterparts in Scotland, Irish players are coming to see Italian football as a land of opportunity more and more in recent years.  

What used to be seen as an exotic, brave and unpredictable step has become a well-worn path.

Ferguson’s move and the noise around it may be different to many of his compatriots – his Premier League reputation and staggering price tag will see to that – but he can rest assured that he is not the first Irishman to step into this brave new world.

For now, the Giallorossi will hope he proves to be more Brady than O’Brien…