Francesco Totti at 50: The eighth king of Rome, the spoon and the selfie

Roma have had better teams and bigger budgets, but they have never had anyone like him. On his 50th birthday, it is worth going back through the moments that turned a boy from Porta Metronia into the eighth king of Rome.

Totti was born in Rome on 27 September 1976 and grew up a few minutes' walk from the Aurelian Walls, in the San Giovanni area. He was a Roma supporter before he was anything else, which made what followed feel less like a career than a destiny.

He made his Serie A debut on 28 March 1993, at the age of 16, when Vujadin Boškov sent him on against Brescia. Nobody in the stadium could have guessed that the skinny teenager would still be playing for the club 24 years later. His first Serie A goal came against Foggia on 4 September 1994, and from then on the goals never stopped.

Carlo Mazzone, the Roman coach who looked after him in those early years, is often credited with protecting him from the pressure and from the media. Zdeněk Zeman then turned him into a left-sided forward with total freedom. By 31 October 1998, aged just 22, Totti was captain of Roma. He would keep the armband for almost two decades.

Totti's relationship with Lazio deserves a chapter of its own. Few players have understood what the Derby della Capitale means quite like he did, and even fewer have enjoyed it as much.

In April 1999, after scoring in a 3-1 win over Lazio, he lifted his shirt to reveal a T-shirt underneath with the words "Vi ho purgato ancora", roughly "I've purged you again". It was cheeky, it was provocative and it was pure Totti.

Sixteen years later, in January 2015, he went one better. After scoring his second goal to rescue a 2-2 draw, he ran to the Curva Sud, grabbed a phone from a member of staff and took a selfie with the celebrating supporters behind him. In an era when everybody was already taking selfies, only Totti thought to take one in the middle of a derby. The image went around the world.

If one moment captures Totti's personality, it is Amsterdam, 29 June 2000. Italy were in a penalty shootout against the Netherlands in the semi-final of Euro 2000. The pressure was enormous. Before walking up, the 23-year-old reportedly turned to his teammates and said, in Roman dialect: "Mo je faccio er cucchiaio." "Now I'll do the spoon on him."

He did exactly that. Facing Edwin van der Sar, one of the tallest and most respected goalkeepers in the world, Totti dinked the ball softly down the middle as the keeper dived. Italy went through to the final. The "cucchiaio" became a word that every Italian football fan understands, and Totti used it again and again throughout his career, most memorably at San Siro against Inter in 2005 with an audacious lob from distance.

Every great player of Totti's generation eventually faced the same question: Do you leave for a bigger club? In 2004, Real Madrid came calling at the height of their Galácticos era. The offer was real, and the money was enormous. Totti said no.

He has since explained, in several interviews over the years, that he could never have imagined celebrating a goal in another shirt, or playing against Roma. For supporters around Europe who watched their idols leave for Madrid, Barcelona or Milan, that decision became part of the Totti legend. In modern football, loyalty is often treated as naivety. For Totti, it was simply who he was.

The reward came in 2001. Under Fabio Capello, with Gabriel Batistuta and Vincenzo Montella alongside him, Totti led Roma to only the third Scudetto in the club's history. He scored in the 3-1 win over Parma on the final day, 17 June 2001, as the Stadio Olimpico celebrated a title many Romanisti had waited a lifetime to see. Two Coppa Italia titles and two Supercoppa Italiana wins followed, but nothing ever matched that afternoon.

On 19 February 2006, in a Serie A match against Empoli, Totti suffered a fractured fibula and ankle ligament damage after a challenge from Richard Vanigli. The World Cup in Germany was less than four months away, and his tournament looked over.

Instead, with a metal plate inserted in his ankle, he raced back in time. He was not at his best, but he delivered one of Italy's defining moments of the tournament. In the round of 16 against Australia, with the score at 0-0 and the game deep into stoppage time, Italy won a penalty. Totti stepped up and buried it. Afterwards he celebrated by sucking his thumb, the gesture he dedicated to his wife and young son.

Two weeks later, Italy were world champions in Berlin. Totti retired from international football the following year, having won 58 caps and scored nine goals for his country.

What is often forgotten is how good Totti became once he was moved into a more central role. Under Luciano Spalletti in 2006-07, playing as a false nine before the term was fashionable, he scored 26 Serie A goals. It was enough to win the Capocannoniere title and the European Golden Shoe.

Age did little to slow him down. On 30 September 2014, at 38, he scored a delicious chip over Joe Hart at the Etihad Stadium against Manchester City, becoming the oldest player to score in the Champions League at the time. English audiences who had only seen him in highlights suddenly understood what Italians had been talking about for years.

Then there was Torino on 20 April 2016. Totti, 39 years old, came off the bench with Roma losing 2-1. Within minutes, he had scored twice: An equaliser and then a penalty to win the game 3-2. The Olimpico exploded. It was one of the last great nights of his career, and it proved that the magic had never really gone.

Totti's appeal was never just about football. Romans called him Er Pupone, the big baby, and he always carried a playful, self-deprecating streak. In 2003 he published a book of jokes about himself, collecting the many gags Italians told about his supposed lack of intelligence and his Roman accent. The proceeds went to charity. The book sold in huge numbers, and it turned the mockery into affection.

He was also a man of contradictions. The same player who spat at Denmark's Christian Poulsen at Euro 2004 and was banned for three matches could also be the most generous team-mate in the dressing room. He was never perfect. That was part of why people loved him.

Everything ends, even for kings. On 28 May 2017, Totti played his final game for Roma, a 3-2 win over Genoa at the Stadio Olimpico. By then he had made 786 appearances and scored 307 goals for the club in all competitions. His 250 Serie A goals put him second in the all-time list of the Italian top flight, behind only Silvio Piola. He had matched Paolo Maldini's record of 25 seasons in Serie A, every one of them in the same shirt.

After the final whistle, he walked around the pitch while the whole stadium cried with him. He then read a letter to the supporters, admitting that he was afraid of what came next. Rarely has a footballer's farewell felt so much like the end of an era for an entire city.

His time as a director at the club was short and ended with his resignation in June 2019, a painful separation that many Roma fans still regret. But no board decision could ever change what he means to the club.

Totti is spending his birthday in Las Vegas, surrounded by his family, according to Italian media. In Rome, however, the celebrations will be everywhere. There will be murals, banners, messages on social media and endless debates in bars and on local radio about which of his goals was the greatest.

For the younger generation of Roma fans who never saw him play live, he is a myth passed down by parents and grandparents. For those who were there, he is something more personal. He was the local boy who stayed, who carried the club on his shoulders, who gave them a Scudetto, a thousand moments of joy and a reason to believe that one-club loyalty still meant something.

Buon compleanno, Capitano. Rome has had many kings. Only one of them wore the number 10.