Enzo Le Fée Set for Sunderland Move

After a half-season spent on the bench, the French midfielder is taking his talents to…Sunderland?

AS Roma fans, we’ve grown accustomed to all manner of strange and twisted transfer sagas. From vague allusions of a signing so shocking it would cause thousands to flock to the airport (that had to be Zlatan) to Leandro Castan basically telling Roma, “Hey, look at this Marquinhos kid,” to the always entertaining and seemingly arbitrary signings of players like Clement Grenier and Jonathan Silva, Roma tends to take silly season quite literally.

And then there’s the curious case of Enzo Le Fée. The former Rennes midfielder was one of Roma’s first summer purchases, arriving in early July on a €23 million transfer from the Ligue 1 outfit. However, rather than developing into an integral piece of the Giallorossi midfield, he’s become a bit infamous in certain Capitoline conspiracy circles, which claim that his acquisition was partially responsible for the rift that eventually brought down Daniele De Rossi and CEO Lina Souloukou.

While all that makes for good gossip, it became moot once the season started. Whether De Rossi, Ivan Juric, or Claudio Ranieri called the shots, Le Fée was often on the outside looking in, logging only 459 minutes in all competitions. Given that paucity of playing time, it didn’t take long before the transfer vultures started circling.

However, in another strange twist, rather than returning to Ligue 1 or even taking root with another Serie A club, Le Fée is heading to England—but not the glitz and glamour of the Premiership. According to multiple sources in Italy and elsewhere, Le Fée will link up with Sunderland, currently fourth in the Championship, in the second rung of the English footballing pyramid.

rung of the English footballing pyramid.

Sunderland’s decade-long run in the Premiership ended after the 2016-2017 season, which was painfully and exquisitely chronicled in the Netflix series Sunderland Till I Die*. Since then, they have struggled mightily.