AS Roma confirm missing teenager featured in Henrikh Mkhitaryan announcement video found safe

Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored on his debut for Roma against Sassuolo on Sunday
AFP/Getty Images
George Flood17 September 2019

AS Roma have confirmed that a missing boy in Kenya featured in their announcement video for the loan signing of Arsenal's Henrikh Mkhitaryan has been found safe.

This summer, the Serie A club partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States and Italy's Telefono Azzurro to use their social media channels to raise awareness about the plight of missing children.

Roma, who have over five million followers across social media, announced on Twitter on Monday that the 13-year-old boy last seen in August had been found and returned to his family.

They added that the teenager was actually found on Sunday - the same day as man-of-the-match Mkhitaryan scored on his debut for Paulo Fonseca's Giallorossi in a 4-2 Serie A victory against Sassuolo at the Stadio Olimpico.

Roma have also republished an edited version of the video to publicise the 11 other missing children featured.

"Through @missingchild_ke partnership with @ASRomaEN we lit a big candle of hope to guide these children back home to their families," Maryana Munyendo, executive director of Missing Child Kenya, a charity that has teamed up with AS Roma, wrote on Twitter.

Last month, a 15-year-old girl from London was found safe and well six days after featuring in a Roma video to announce the arrival of new signing Mert Cetin.

"We have a massive social media following and our announcements generate incredible reach and awareness, all over the world," Paul Rogers, head of strategy at AS Roma, said at the time of the launch.

"We thought that at the exact moment when the world's attention is on the club's announcement, we could use our social media channels not for self-promotion but rather to help both the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Telefono Azzurro find missing children."

Additional reporting by Reuters.

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