“Roots” Coming Soon to Sky and NOW

Daniele De Rossi returns to his roots in a docuseries that, through Ostiamare and its local community, looks back to the simplicity of football as it once was to shape the game of tomorrow.

Before the packed stadiums, the national team and the World Cup, there was a football pitch in Ostia. Daniele De Rossi used to play there. Many years later, he decided to return.

That return gave rise to ROOTS, the docuseries produced by DDR Media and Damocle. It follows the first season of the project at Ostiamare, the club where De Rossi began playing, while telling a bigger story: that of a community striving to rebuild and grow through football.

Ostia is not just the backdrop. It is part of the story. A complex place with a strong identity, where for generations the football pitch has also been the one place to go, to meet, to spend time together. As in many other Italian neighborhoods and cities, football was often simply that: something to do, and someone to do it with.

ROOTS starts with Ostiamare to tell this story too. The value a football club can have for a community, for young people and for families. The possibility for a club to grow and, as it does, help improve the world around it.

But the series also looks at what football has become.

A global industry, a product, a spectacle, a machine capable of generating images and content without ever stopping. This is the football of new generations, and there would be little point in looking at it through nostalgia alone. But as everything changes, ROOTS asks what is worth holding on to.

The pitch down the street. The changing room. The relationship between a team and its community. A sense of belonging to a place. The time spent together before and after a match. The idea that football should not simply be something to watch, but can continue to be something to experience.

It is within this transformation that the story of Ostiamare unfolds: a club that wants to grow without becoming something else. And the story of De Rossi, who, after reaching the highest levels of the game, returns to amateur football to try to build something meaningful.

Not to take football back to the past. But to understand what the football of yesterday can still offer the football of tomorrow.

ROOTS, produced by DDR Media and Damocle, is a seven-episode docuseries featuring Daniele De Rossi. Directed by Nicola Ravera Rafele.

Coming soon to Sky and NOW.