Second missing child featured in Roma campaign video found safe

A nine-year-old boy who featured in a recent AS Roma missing child transfer announcement video has been found safe and well.

The boy, who can no longer be named or identified for legal reasons, appeared in the video to announce the arrival of Davide Zappacosta on social media.

This is the second missing child to have featured in an AS Roma transfer announcement this summer who has been found safe and well.

Last month, a 15-year-old girl from London, who had gone missing earlier in the summer, was found safe and well six days after being featured in the Roma video to announce the arrival of Mert Cetin. The video had been watched over 800,000 times before it was removed from Roma's social platforms after the teenager was found.

In July, the club partnered with the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children to expand the scope of the initiative, which originally focused on children from Italy, America, the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Through the partnership with the ICMEC, and their network of country partners, Roma have highlighted missing children cases from Spain, Canada, Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Albania, Greece and finally, Belgium, where the young boy was found.

“I’m pleased to confirm that a young nine-year-old boy from Belgium, who was featured in a video for AS Roma, has been found safe and well with the help of Child Focus,” said Caroline Humer, Director, Global Missing Children's Center at the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. “As with all resolved cases, for legal reasons and to protect the child, we and our partners on the ground can’t identify the child or provide details of the recovery to the public.

“We are always grateful when a missing child is recovered and hopefully more children who have been featured through the AS Roma campaign will also be found safe and well.

"Our partnership with AS Roma is very important in raising awareness of missing cases and we are already in discussion on how we can protect vulnerable children in the future, even after the close of the transfer window.”

The original Davide Zappacosta announcement video, which featured the nine-year-old, has now been removed from all of AS Roma’s social media platforms to protect the identity of the child.An edited version has been republished to ensure the 13 other missing children cases in the original video remain highly visible in the hope that someone, somewhere could come forward with some new information.

Click here to visit the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children website.

Click here to follow the ICMEC on Twitter.

Click here to follow Child Focus Belgium on Twitter.