Five minutes of injury time.
Nails across Rome weren't about to survive the oncoming barrage as AS Roma led by a solitary goal away to Hellas Verona, despite the hosts being down to ten.
They'd been on the wrong side of close finishes multiple times before, and the potential for late goals elsewhere (and in Verona) could see them miss out on the UEFA Champions League. A seven-year wait could get longer, and Roma weren't making this easy. Even their slender 1-0 lead against a relegated Hellas came after the hosts were down to ten, and Donyell Malen made a mess of a penalty before being set up for the rebound by an alert Paulo Dybala.
That had pushed Roma up to 73 points, in third and destined for the UCL, but a nervy performance simply would not ease the tension. They needed the safety net of a second goal, and it came, in the end, from perhaps the most familiar of faces.
Stephan El Shaarawy. 'Il Faraone', with his last kick for the club.
The clock ticked over to 92:30 as Robinio Vaz wrestled with Armel Bella-Kotchap in the middle of the park. The crowd inside the Bentegodi still held out hope for a late sting in the tail for Roma - they had witnessed Hellas take points off champions Internazionale and Juventus recently.
Down by the left touchline, Vaz held on gamely against Bella-Kotchap but the Hellas defender perhaps used unfair means to hold on to the ball as the duo tumbled to the floor. The ball bounced a few yards behind the half-way line as the referee was about to whistle but then changed his mind and waved play-on.
Out of the corner of his eye, El Shaarawy had spied Dybala making a run through the middle, with absolutely no defender around him. The ball still bobbling in the middle, Il Faraone used all his technical skill to produce a first-time trivela pass, curving the ball right into Dybala's path.
Domagoj Bradaric was Hellas' last man and raced back to cover off Dybala's run, his 26-year-old legs moving much more rapidly than the 32-year-old Argentinian's legs. As Dybala ran onto the ball, Vaz had extricated himself from the tussle with Bella-Kotchap and joined El Shaarawy in bursting up the pitch in support.
Dybala ran onto the ball, controlled it and drove towards the box. Bradaric had caught up with him, but just as Dybala entered the box, Roma's Argentinian wizard checked inside. He had three options before him, all with an equal shot at goal.
A pass square to Vaz was the most obvious - Roma's young French forward had the goal at his mercy. Dybala could even have taken the shot himself after cutting inside - a goal he had scored many times before. And yet, perhaps sensing the occasion, Dybala chose to hold for a half-second to ensure El Shaarawy made a supposedly decoy run behind him, and then handed him the ball with a backheel that would have left Francesco Totti exclaiming 'Bellissima!'.
The ball had trickled to a narrow angle, and Hellas keeper Lorenzo Montipò ran out to charge it down, but there was no stopping destiny. With his last ever kick for Roma, Il Faraone tickled the ball past Montipo and a diving Bradaric, watching it sail into the opposite bottom corner, thus sending Roma into the promised land of the UEFA Champions League.
What a way for Stephan El Shaarawy to bring his Roma career to an end ��#VeronaRoma pic.twitter.com/FJ4HxfYJuV
- Lega Serie A (@SerieA_EN) May 25, 2026
With 92:46 on the clock, the player born in 1992, who wore 92 on the back of his shirt, had sent a team coached by Gian Piero Gasperini (the same coach who had given him his debut as a 16-year-old) into the UEFA Champions League, with his last kick for the club.
"It's the best ending possible," said Il Faraone after the game, and he'd be right.