Francesco Totti: Roma's Greatest Son Who Was Destined to Become the People's King

In a sport which is becoming less and less relatable for its fanbase with each passing year, there are a handful of players who bring football right back down to earth, back to your local park on a bitterly cold Sunday morning.

The biggest criticisms of our beautiful game surround the mounds of cash swirling at the top end, and the protagonists who appear to have lost touch with reality, forgetting the dusty old roads they walked to arrive at the summit.

But for every couple of thousand disconnected mercenaries who no longer play the game for its joy, there is one who has never lost sight of the reason he first kicked a ball around a field as a young child.

Francesco Totti grew up dreaming of pulling on the red and yellow jersey of AS Roma, scoring goals in front of the Curva Sud, and giving silverware to the loyal Romanisti of Italy's capital. He never contemplated joining a Premier League giant, switching Rome for Madrid or becoming a global icon.

He just wanted to play football for Roma. And he did. For 25 years. Of course, he was one of the greatest players to walk the earth, and a wander through the cobbled streets of the most beautiful city on the planet will endorse this theory.

He's still underrated though. People cite a lack of ambition or a fear of leaving his comfort zone as a blot on his career, while others point to a lack of silverware as a signal of a deficiency in quality. All of these imperfections only add to the myth and the glory of this special man.

No matter how bad the players around him, no matter the amount of money that was thrown at him, Totti's loyalty never wavered. As Real Madrid president Florentino Perez will testify, the Roma star is the only man to have looked directly into the bright lights of Santiago Bernabeu, and decided to turn the other cheek.

As the great man himself said, 'winning one Scudetto with Roma is worth ten at any other club'. There can be no denying this incomparable love story. Luckily for Totti, that Scudetto did arrive in 2001, and although he would have expected many more to follow, it wasn't to be.

However, our story focuses on the early years of the Roma magician, as he broke through into the Giallorossi side and gave supporters a glimpse of what they should expect over the following two decades.

Er bimbo de oro. The golden boy of Rome.

Back in the 1990's, Francesco Totti was exactly that. A boy. He made his debut in the 1992/93 campaign, and only made ten league appearances from that moment until the end of the 1993/94 season.

But it was in the second half of the 90's that the predestinato earned his place on the Olimpico throne. And it was against an imperious Milan side in 1996 that Totti scored one of his most memorable and technically outstanding goals - a strike fit for a king.

Showing great heart to rival the goalkeeper to a bouncing ball on the edge of the box, the youngster charged down the clearance, leaving himself with an open goal - albeit from an awkward angle and with two retreating defenders in his path. But the youngster showed the presence of mind and natural ability with which he had been blessed by the Gods, to chip the ball with the outside of his right boot over his helpless opponents and into the far corner of the net. Simply extraordinary.

But that was Totti. He was extraordinary. The forward somehow managed to build a two-way, loving relationship with a fanbase which felt so related and connected to their hero, despite the fact he had been presented with supernatural powers on the pitch. A man of the people.

It was from 1997-99 when he really came into his own however, becoming Roma's youngest ever captain, and picking up the gladiatorial sword to charge into battle as a leader. Aged 22, and tasked with entertaining a baying amphitheatre, Rome's greatest son puffed out his chest, and got his blade dirty.

It was in this period, under the eccentric and attack-minded coach Zdenek Zeman, that Totti began to find the net on a regular basis, adding goals and assists to his graceful movement and ability to see the game from an almost bird's eye view.

He kicked off the 1997/98 season in emphatic fashion, scoring a scorching volley from the far left corner of the box, connecting so sweetly with the cross that the ball thundered beyond the goalkeeper at a devastating pace. An elegant bludgeon.

This campaign introduced the world to just how deadly this boy could be, and how much variation he had to his methods of mass destruction. Curling free-kicks, crashing strikes with both feet, ice-cold one-on-ones. In front of goal, there was no one more efficient nor flashy than the great forward.

His willingness to embrace the impossible, to laugh in the face of hierarchy, and refusal to conform was encapsulated in one stunning cucchiaio, the chip which would become synonymous with the name Francesco Totti.

Racing onto a through ball against Parma in 1998, the striker was faced with the towering and imposing frame of Gianluigi Buffon. On his weaker foot, and with the angle narrowing rapidly, Totti had only one thought in his mind. With the great Italian shot-stopper slightly outside his six-yard box, the Roma man produced the most delicate and accurate chip, looping agonisingly over his adversary and into the net. It was magic. But Totti made it look effortless - because for him, it was exactly that.

His reading of the game, his majesty on and off the ball, and his love of whipping no-look through balls with his back to goal made him the most enigmatic and captivating player in Italian football. Totti was ramming home the goals too, having unearthed an innate tendency to lurk deep and lash fierce drives into the bottom corner with ambidextrous ease.

He followed up his 13 goals in 1997/98 with another 12 the next season, and while he may not have been starring in the best Roma team of his career, his individual displays were the talk of the nation. Totti was voted the Serie A Young Player of the Year in 1999 for his terrific exploits, and would go on to win the senior award in 2000.

Roma ended the 20th century as the sixth best team in Serie A, humiliated by their fierce rivals Lazio, who won the scudetto that season. The first full campaign in the 21st century would be I Giallorossi's finest for decades, lifting only the third league title in their history - which remains their most recent success.

Totti was decisive on that day, scoring a goal he would have dreamt of achieving every night of his childhood, and celebrated in similar fashion. Ripping off his shirt, gurning with ecstasy and disbelief, he charged straight towards the people he would have been sat alongside, had he not fulfilled his destiny as one of the greatest footballers in history.