Daniele De Rossi’s return to Ostia has become more than a personal homecoming. Radici, a seven-part documentary series premiering at the Rome Film Festival before its release on Sky and Now, follows the former Roma coach from the disappointment of his dismissal to the rebuilding of Ostiamare, the club where his football life began.
Key takeaways
- De Rossi became owner of Ostiamare in January 2025, when the Serie D side was third from bottom and facing relegation danger.
- The club secured survival before winning promotion to Serie C in April 2026, ending a 35-year absence from the third tier.
- Ostiamare’s Under-19 team also reached the national finals and won its first youth championship.
- The series charts De Rossi’s decision to accept a return to coaching with Genoa during Ostiamare’s successful 2025-26 campaign.
- Former player Valerio Mastandrea serves as showrunner, with Nicola Ravera Rafele directing the production.
A club rebuilt from its base
The story begins in autumn 2024, shortly after De Rossi’s eight-month spell in charge of Roma came to an end. Having spent much of his career in the centre of the game, he found the sudden distance from the training ground difficult. Ostiamare, he says, gave him a sense of purpose again.
“Ostiamare rescued me,” De Rossi explains in the series. He reflects on the uneasy void that can follow a playing career or a sudden separation from football: after only a few days at home, he says, a person can look in the mirror and wonder what they are doing there.
The connection was already deep. The documentary moves between footage and memories of De Rossi as a fair-haired boy playing football on the beaches of Ostia, his call-up to Fabio Capello’s Roma first team, and his eventual return to the coastal club. He had considered buying Ostiamare as early as 2015, but the opportunity only became real a decade later.
By then, the club was in a difficult condition. Roberto Di Paolo had left after a troubled presidency, while matters surrounding the Anco Marzio stadium had added to the uncertainty at a club with around 80 years of history. The first-team position was precarious, but the wider problems were equally pressing: deteriorating changing rooms, no hot water and a pitch irrigation system in need of work.
De Rossi’s arrival was therefore not framed simply as an attempt to keep the team in Serie D. It was a commitment to restore the organisation itself. “The biggest match is the structural one,” he says, describing the work as a constant rollercoaster. His stated aim was to establish a durable club that could develop over time and offer a meaningful reference point for young people in the area.
The cameras follow him through matches, dressing-room moments and meetings with his staff. The emotion of the official announcement remains clear to him: he says he had not felt that moved for years. Yet the first months also brought anxiety, with De Rossi admitting that confidence could quickly give way to fears of a project damaged by relegation to Eccellenza.
From survival to a return to Serie C
Ostiamare found the response required in the closing weeks of the Serie D season, preserving their place in the division. The campaign also offered encouragement from the youth sector, where the Under-19 side reached the national finals and lifted the category’s Scudetto for the first time in club history.
The following summer carried a different mood. Ostiamare opened the new season with a win over Ancona and continued to collect positive results, drawing the town back towards the team. A sequence of nine straight victories eventually ended with a draw against Teramo, but the momentum around the club did not disappear.
While the team pursued promotion, De Rossi faced another professional decision. Genoa’s directors approached him with the chance to return to management. He chose to accept the offer, but met Ostiamare’s players before leaving, addressing the group with whom he had shared the first stage of the project.
The documentary closes with the coastal club’s promotion to Serie C in April 2026, a destination Ostiamare had not reached for 35 years. For De Rossi, the achievement links a demanding new ownership role to the earliest memories of his career. He describes the experience simply: “I have gone back to football’s roots.”
