Loïs Openda Reflects on Serie A Experience

Loïs Openda’s lone season in Italy did not bring goals, glory, or a ticket to the 2026 World Cup with Belgium. He still refuses to file it under “failure.”

Left out of the national team and short on end product, the forward looks back on that year as a hard, necessary lesson.

He recalled his first conversations with the club hierarchy and how they sold him on Serie A’s demands. Speaking to L’Equipe, Openda said: “I spoke with Damien Comolli, who was then the club director, and he explained how he intended to use me in a difficult league. In Italy, the team that really exploits depth is Inter. Roma are only just starting to understand it.”

That idea of “depth” — attacking space behind defences, living off runs rather than to feet — became a central theme of his time there. The league didn’t always suit that profile. Nor, he suggests, did the dressing room dynamics.

Competition for minutes up front proved fierce. Openda laid out the pecking order and the tactical clash that followed: “The coach wanted me, but Vlahovic and David were already playing in my position. I had good chemistry with David, but the team wasn't used to playing with a player who runs in behind, and Vlahovic tended to keep the ball to himself.”

He pushed, he waited, he snatched at the chances that came. They weren’t enough.

“I tried to get my chance, and sometimes I did, but towards the end of the season, I realised that to play, I had to leave,” he admitted. The decision sounds brutal, yet he refuses to treat it as a wrong turn. “It wasn't a mistake, and it allowed me to work on aspects I hadn't considered. I knew exactly what I was getting into, and I'm sure that in other circumstances, it would have gone better.”

Openda walks away from that chapter without a World Cup place and without a big Serie A highlight reel. What he does carry is conviction that the detour toughened him — and that, given a different context, his relentless runs in behind will finally find the stage they deserve.