The 2025/26 Italian Serie A campaign has turned into an interesting one for fans of AS Roma as with 34 games played in the domestic season the club are perched in sixth place in the top flight table with 61 points gathered from 19 wins and four draws.Naturally, the frustration for I Giallorossi and manager Gian Piero Gasperini is that the season could quite easily have been far better and for fans who secure tickets through websites specialised like this one, they would have hoped to receive more bang for their buck. Eleven defeats (second placed Napoli come closest with seven across the campaign so far) have massively cost us a more real attempt at the top four positions, and we only needed to turn a couple of those defeats into draws for that to have happened.What will be will be when it comes to the league now though, albeit all fans will be hoping and demanding that we enjoy a very strong end to the season with the handful of matches that remain, and then it will be time to turn attentions fully to the summer off season and the almost endless shenanigans that we will see on the transfer window rumour mill.It is probably pretty well known that Gasperini will be looking to shake up his first team options ahead of the 2026/27 battles that lie ahead, but one story that seems set to run and run and turn into a saga is the potential future of defender Evan Ndicka.The 26 year old former Eintracht Frankfurt centre half and 28 capped Ivory Coast international made the move to the Stadio Olimpico back in the summer of 2023 as a free agent, and having impressed in the years since he is reportedly a man in demand but owing to a contract clause, any potential sale is likely to involve drawn out negotiations and become quite complicated.It is claimed that one of the terms of his signing on fee and bonus arrangements was that he would be entitled to 20% of the value of any future sale, and although Roma would benefit from a significant capital gain here when it came to relevant financial regulations at play, his owed 20% sum stands as a natural mark up for any starting transfer fee. For every understandable reason whilst we would like to park that 20% outside of our profit, potential buying clubs would want that 20% to come out of our profit share.The clause itself is now pretty common in the modern day game of free agency and can significantly work to a clubs’ advantage when it comes to offsetting other more immediate demands, but it will certainly complicate negotiations as we will not be just arguing over a fee, we are arguing over a set portion of a fee that eats into our share to a degree whatever we now do.Maximising Ndicka’s fee is even more important this summer if he does, as expected, move on as reports claim that we will be jettisoning at least six players as a minimum at the end of the current campaign. This will be a mix of natural expiry of contracts and as existing loan deals come to a conclusion, and naturally those who leave will need to be replaced ahead of the new season kicking off.
