The post went up on 11 August, at the end of a bruising fortnight in which one of Fabrizio Romano’s “Here we go” calls had been publicly picked apart by a rival reporter.
“I’m probably not gonna continue into the transfer market industry as I’m doing right now for longer: it’s time to change the approach, the view…”
Romano did not say he was leaving journalism. He said he would explain more once the summer window closes on 3 September.
The Diomande row that framed the post
On 26 July, Romano posted a “Here we go” on Yan Diomande, telling followers Real Madrid had closed a deal with RB Leipzig for the Ivory Coast winger for a fee above €100m. Within hours, Sky Germany’s Florian Plettenberg pushed back in public.
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“If there had already been a full agreement between RB Leipzig and Real Madrid, it would be possible to report the exact transfer fee, wouldn’t it?”
Plettenberg added that RB Leipzig, Real Madrid and the player’s camp were all still telling him the deal was not done. Romano hit back on the same platform.
“Don’t worry, Diomande goes to Real Madrid as Klopp went to Germany.”
The exchange spilled into references to private messages, follower counts and each other’s reporting standards. RB Leipzig’s sporting director Marcel Schäfer then took a swing at the transfer press in general.
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“One or two so-called transfer experts had already reported seven to 10 days ago that something was ‘done’ or ‘Here we go’. That simply isn’t the case,” Schäfer told reporters.
The deal did land. Real Madrid announced the signing of Diomande on 6 August, roughly 11 days after Romano’s initial “Here we go”, with the fee reported by Sky Sports at up to £120m.
How the tag started, by accident
Romano is 33, and by his own count has tens of millions of followers across X and Instagram. He has told interviewers the “Here we go” was never a strategy.
“I was just tweeting and tweeting about Man United… one day it was over, finally done, and I said, ‘Okay, here we go.'”
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Fans, he has said, then began asking him to use the phrase for their own clubs. He imposed a rule around it, that the tag only arrives when signatures are done or all but done and only when direct sources at both clubs and in the player’s camp confirm it. Modern deals, with multiple agencies, third-party clauses and staggered paperwork, make that line harder to hold, as the Diomande timeline showed.
What he still wants to hold on to
Even in a note flagging a change of direction, Romano was not writing an obituary for the beat. He described the pull of the story he has spent a decade chasing.
“The adrenaline of the breaking story, the exclusivity, the unexpected-factor, from zero links at all to done deal… well, this will always remain unmatched for me.”
Whether he narrows his output, changes platform or steps away from the transfer beat entirely, Romano has said the detail comes after 3 September, when the summer window shuts.
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