How Lazio’s Romano Floriani Mussolini is related to Sophia Loren

Romano Floriani Mussolini slid in at the far post, only to see the offside flag interrupt his celebration. Video review confirmed his 16th-minute goal, Lazio’s third in a 6–2 win at Sassuolo and the 23-year-old defender’s first in Serie A. It was another contribution to Gattuso’s remarkable start at Lazio, but the name attached to the scorer carried a history stretching well beyond football.

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On the back of his shirt is simply “Romano.” His full name is Romano Benito Floriani Mussolini. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 until his removal in 1943, was his great-grandfather. His grandfather was a jazz pianist, his mother became an Italian politician, and one of his relatives is among cinema’s most recognizable stars, Sophia Loren.

How Sophia Loren fits into the family

His grandfather, also named Romano Mussolini, grew up in the dictator’s household and went on to make a career at the piano. He married Maria Scicolone, Loren’s younger sister, in 1962. Their daughter Alessandra is the Lazio player’s mother. That makes Loren his great-aunt, an unusual connection between one of Italian football’s emerging players and a Hollywood legend.

In 1977, Alessandra appeared alongside Loren in A Special Day, a drama set in Rome during Adolf Hitler’s 1938 visit to Fascist Italy. Alessandra played the daughter of Loren’s character. Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter was acting in a film examining life under her grandfather’s dictatorship, opposite her own aunt.

How Lazio stayed independent in 1927

Lazio had encountered the Mussolini regime decades before Romano Floriani Mussolini joined its academy. Founded in 1900, the club was already established when Fascist officials sought to consolidate teams in Rome in 1927. The merger produced AS Roma from several capital clubs, but Lazio remained independent, thanks in significant part to Giorgio Vaccaro, a Fascist official and Lazio football administrator who resisted the plan.

The connection went further. During that period, Lazio offered Benito Mussolini membership in its sporting association, an affiliation recorded in the historical biography of Vaccaro. The membership is sometimes used to suggest the dictator was a devoted Lazio supporter, although it doesn’t establish his personal allegiance to the club. It does illustrate how closely the regime’s political figures were involved in organizing Italian sport.

Romano Mussolini at the piano

The year of that football reorganization was also the year Romano Mussolini, the future pianist, was born. As a child, he listened to jazz records brought home by his older brother Vittorio and developed a fascination with Duke Ellington. After the collapse of Fascism and his father’s death in 1945, he pursued music professionally, sometimes performing under the name Romano Full.

By the mid-1950s, he was playing and recording with established musicians. He participated in a session with Dizzy Gillespie in 1955 and later performed with artists including Chet Baker and Helen Merrill. His album Jazz allo Studio 7, released in 1963, was recognized as record of the year in Italy, and he also composed music for films. His accomplishments established a musical identity beyond his family’s political notoriety.

His marriage to Maria Scicolone brought him into Sophia Loren’s family. Decades later, his footballer grandson recalled inheriting his love of jazz and keeping a small musical snowman that Romano had given him as a child. He also remembered being scolded by his mother after playing with one of Loren’s Oscar statuettes during a visit to her home in Geneva.

Alessandra Mussolini followed a different public path. Having appeared in A Special Day as a teenager, she entered Italy’s parliament in 1992 representing the Italian Social Movement, a party rooted in the country’s postwar neo-Fascist tradition. She later held other parliamentary and European Parliament posts, including under the Forza Italia banner. Her political positions have been public and consequential, but they aren’t positions that can be assigned to her son by inheritance.

View Stadio United’s post on Romano Floriani Mussolini’s family on Instagram

From Juve Stabia to a first Serie A goal

The surname has nonetheless followed him through football. He started in Roma’s youth system before moving to Lazio, then developed through loans to Pescara in Serie C and Juve Stabia in Serie B.

At Juve Stabia, he scored his first professional goal against Cesena in December 2024. Video of the celebration showed supporters raising their arms as the stadium announcer called his first name and the crowd responded with “Mussolini.” The gestures prompted questions about possible Fascist salutes and an investigation by the Italian football federation. Juve Stabia rejected the political interpretation, describing the celebration as its customary routine.

Lazio has faced separate controversies involving Fascist symbolism. In 2021, the club’s former eagle handler was suspended after being filmed making a Fascist salute and chanting in praise of Mussolini. Lazio condemned the conduct. Those incidents form part of the club’s wider history, rather than evidence of the defender’s own political views.

His next loan took him to Cremonese, where he made his Serie A debut against Sassuolo in August 2025. Coming off the bench, he won the late penalty that delivered a 3–2 victory. Back at Lazio this season, the right-sided defender has become part of Gattuso’s attacking system, encouraged to advance from the back. His first top-flight goal arrived against that same opponent, this time wearing Lazio’s shirt.

After the 6–2 victory, he spoke primarily about repaying the large traveling Lazio support and the freedom Gattuso gives his fullbacks. He has repeatedly said that politics isn’t his interest and that he wants to be judged on his football. The name on his shirt remains “Romano,” as it was during his Cremonese loan, rather than the abbreviated family surname he wore at Juve Stabia.

Ninety-nine years after Lazio resisted being absorbed into a new Roman club, a descendant of the dictator whose government oversaw that restructuring has scored for its first team. His family history explains why the name attracts attention. The run to the far post, the finish and the overturned offside flag are the part he has made himself.