Smalling at 35: A Six-Year Roman Chapter Heads to Porto
Six seasons after leaving Manchester United for Roma, Chris Smalling is in talks with Porto as a free agent, carrying a Serie A winner's medal and the first Europa Conference League.
Chris Smalling's Roman chapter is closing. Six seasons after leaving Manchester United for Roma, the 35-year-old centre-back is in negotiations with Porto, according to a Sky Sports report.
It is a quieter kind of departure than the one that brought him to the Stadio Olimpico. He arrived as a Premier League winner and a Europa League winner, the kind of defender United had decided they could sell. He leaves, if the Porto move completes, as a free agent with a Serie A winner's medal and a Europa Conference League winner's patch on his sleeve — one of the most decorated English defenders in Italian football in a generation.
That is a particular kind of journey. Roma were not a finished project when Smalling walked in. They were a club in search of an identity, a team that had finished sixth the season before his arrival and was trying to convince a long history of underachievement to sit down. He did not solve the problem alone. Nobody solves Roma alone. But his defending — physical, unshowy, occasionally brilliant in the air — gave the project something it had been missing: a centre-back who could be trusted to do the ugly parts without complaint, and to do them well.
In 2022, Roma won the inaugural Europa Conference League. Smalling was there. The club added a Serie A title to a room that had been empty since the early 2000s, and Smalling was there for that, too. He had 31 England caps before the move; he finishes his Roma years with the same number, and a club that treated him like a Roman.
Now, at 35, he is a free agent. The Premier League will not be calling. Manchester United let him go six years ago with the calculation that a 29-year-old defender with diminishing resale value was worth what Roma were offering. It was, in retrospect, one of the gentler separations in modern football. He did not sulk. He did not campaign. He flew south and got on with it.
What Porto see in him is, in part, obvious. They are a club that competes in the Champions League by default and is accustomed to having veteran defenders in the room. They are not paying for nostalgia. They are paying for competence, and they are paying for someone who will not need to be told what the offside line is in March.
There are also questions. He turns 36 in November. He has not played a full season in two years. Roma's medical staff knew him as well as anyone in football; Porto's will be starting from scratch. A league that asks defenders to play a higher line is not the league Smalling last defended in.
The story is not about a man clinging on. It is about a man who has spent six years proving that a second act can be longer, and more interesting, than a first. If Porto get the player Roma got when he walked through the door, they will be lucky. If they get the player Roma had in his final seasons, they will still be lucky.
Smalling is in no rush. He never has been. The Sky Sports report frames it as the decision of a man with a family to consider — not just a career to plan. Six years in Rome does that to a man. You stop thinking about the next move, and start thinking about the next life.