Robinio Vaz: Why Roma's new €25 million teenager is being compared to Victor Osimhen

Vaz was born and raised in Mantes-la-Jolie, a suburb located roughly 40 kilometres to the west of Paris that also produced former Arsenal winger Nicolas Pepe. Like so many kids of the same age from the same area, his skills and character were honed on the streets.

"I played games that were attended by many people," he revealed after joining Roma. "They were inter-neighborhood matches, and I felt a lot of pressure."

Consequently, Vaz found it quite easy to cope with the rigours of under-age football and, after impressing for local sides in Mantes-la-Jolie, he was picked up by Sochaux in 2022. By that stage, his potential was obvious and he was lining out for the reserves in the fifth tier of French football while still only 16.

However, Vaz would only spend a season on the books of the Sochaux B team as he was unwilling to extend a contract that only ran until 2025, and the cash-strapped Montbeliard-based outfit were more minded to cash in on their most promising players anyway.

As a result, Marseille made a move for not only Vaz but his fellow forward Alexandre Issanga, both of whom arrived at the Velodrome in August 2024 for approximately €400,000.

Vaz went straight into Marseille's reserve squad, and while he saw himself as a winger, coach Jean-Pierre Papin had no intention of playing him out wide.

"I already have the wingers," the legendary former France centre-forward told reporters. "I was missing this type of player who can make runs in behind the defence because I like that. He does it very well, he creates gaps and is very fast. I think it's a position that could suit him very well in the future."

Papin was spot on. Vaz excelled in a more central position and his performances for Marseille's B team quickly caught the attention of senior team boss Roberto De Zerbi, who handed him his Ligue 1 debut in a game against Strasbourg on January 19, 2025. After coming off the bench at half-time, the then-17-year-old needed just over 20 minutes to make his presence felt by winning the penalty from which Mason Greenwood earned OM a 1-1 draw.

"I play those who deserve it, and he gave us energy," De Zerbi in his post-match press conference. "He needs to keep working. He was born in 2007, so we have to manage him, but I'm not afraid of playing young players."

Vaz's first Marseille goal arrived in the team's first home game of the current campaign, a 5-2 rout of Paris FC, while he marked his first start with an assist for Igor Paixao in the 3-0 win at Metz on October 4. In Marseille's very next game, against Le Havre, Vaz scored one goal and created another before becoming the youngest player to score a double for the club in 78 years with his brace in a 2-2 draw with Angers on October 29.

"He's playing because he’s good - he already was last year," De Zerbi enthused. "We're just helping him take the next step. He's not here for us to sell him to England in the summer!" Why, then, did they sell him to Italy in the winter?

According to L'Equipe, Marseille offered to sextuple Vaz's salary of €120,000 during more than two months of talks over a new contract, but ultimately decided to walk away from the negotiating table towards the end of last year because they were still some way short of meeting the player's wage demands.

Even then, OM reportedly weren't intent on selling Vaz in January, but once Roma met their €25m valuation, nobody at the club was going to stand in his way - not even De Zerbi.

"He was a player that made a real impact for us, but then he closed the shutters," De Zerbi explained in an interview with Viva El Futbol. "He started to train averagely. I would have played him anyway, had he deserved it.

"We're happy for him, we wish him well, he comes from a banlieue in Paris, he deserves to have a good career."

Unfortunately, Vaz's career in Italy hasn't got off to the best start, with him amassing just 170 minutes of action across eight substitute appearances to date. His lack of game time has surprised some pundits and supporters, given the size of the fee, but Gasperini is preaching patience.  

"The club made a very important investment in him and the investment weighs on him a bit, because it inevitably changes perceptions around him, even though he's very young," the former Atalanta coach explained. "I'm trying to quickly understand how useful he can be to Roma in the immediate future, because he will certainly be in the future.

"We need to evaluate his performances carefully between snippets of matches and training sessions, taking into account that it's not easy to arrive in a difficult league like the Italian one midway through the season."

Before things turned sour at Stade Velodrome, a senior figure at Marseille told La Provence last year that Vaz was the best player in his age group in Europe: "If you look across the top five leagues, there’s no other 2007-born player quite like him. He's fast, powerful, fearless - and improving technically every week."

His pace is certainly exceptional, with Jose Alcocer, who worked with Vaz at Under-16 and Under-17 level for France, describing him as "a dragster with a very impressive burst of pace". However, Vaz is also strong in the air - as one would expect from a forward that stands 6'1" tall - and a very composed finisher. 

Nearly all of Vaz's former coaches would acknowledge that he still has things to work on from a technical perspective, but the only real concerns around the teenager making it all the way to the top have been related to his mentality.

Even before De Zerbi was left disappointed by his dramatic dip in focus during the contract talks at Marseille, there were reports of poor behaviour and disciplinary issues during his time at Sochaux.

He's been repeatedly accused of laziness, while Alcocer has also previously described him as "scattered".

"What I mean by that is that he's a little less attentive to the game's structure, thinking that because he's made two good plays, he doesn't necessarily need to put in more effort," the under-age coach told La Provence. "But he can also be a bit distracted off the pitch with everything related to the image of footballers, like their haircuts, for example."

Eyebrows were certainly raised in France when Vaz celebrated an earlier contract renewal with Marseille by recording a video featuring his friends, fireworks and smoke bombs. 

De Zerbi says that Vaz reminds him of Osimhen when the Nigerian really announced himself as a potential star during his solitary season in Ligue 1 at Lille - and one can certainly see where the Italian coach is coming from. The Parisian clearly has to improve his heading and bulk up a bit - but the raw materials are certainly already there. He's got the pace, power and confidence to torment top defenders. 

"He's a player who's all instinct," as De Zerbi says. "He's fast and he's strong. He just has to clean up his technique a bit."

The one concern, obviously, is that he might have more in common with the enigmatic Osimhen than just his footballing ability...

When Vaz first arrived at Roma, he said he was looking forward to playing under Gasperini, whom he described as having "attacking DNA" - which is very true. The Italian's teams play dynamic, offensive football. Forwards often flourish under Gasperini's guidance as a result.

However, the 68-year-old is also one of the more demanding coaches in the game today and can be very critical of his own players, even in public. Just ask Ademola Lookman or Evan Ferguson!

In that sense, it's something of a positive that the former Atalanta boss hasn't spoken negatively about Vaz. Gasperini has, however, made it clear that he doesn't think the 19-year-old is ready to play regularly for Roma - and especially not with another January signing, Donyell Malen, doing such a fantastic job leading the line since arriving from Aston Villa.

It's possible, then, that we won't see the best of Vaz in a Roma shirt until next season, after he's had more time to get to grips with Gasperini's footballing philosophy - because it really isn't a question of ability. It's all about his attitude.

We know Vaz has the talent to shine in Serie A, having already lit up Ligue 1. But he now needs to show that he can cope with the pressure of playing for a top team as well as he dealt with the responsibility of representing his neighbourhood in those infamously intimidating inter-city clashes of his youth.