UPDATE: An email arrived yesterday (1 week before date of event) saying the tickets were available for download. Just a reminder, an email was received about a month before the event that requested a photocopy of each person's passport or national id within 24 hours or the order would be cancelled. We did not do this.
The tickets have been downloaded and the names on them are the correct ones.
The price paid was about double the face value of the tickets. However, if we had waited to purchase through Listicket as the AS Roma site suggests, the ticket cost would have been roughly the same IF we had been able to get them which is doubtful. I did look at them when they became available.
Only open issue is whether or not there is any issue at all gaining admittance with these tickets at the event. I don't anticipate that but will update after the event date.
I did as much research as I could about using Viagogo and in particular using them to purchase soccer tickets in Italy. Since there seems to be a lot of confusion, I will attempt to document what I deduced from our experience.
Soccer tickets can be bought via Listicket (which is like Ticketmaster) or Viagogo (which is like Stubhub). Tickets will be made available on Viagogo earlier than on Listicket (and may cost more sometimes quite a bit more.) Again this is similar to the US. Reading through some of the complaints about Viagogo, most of them have to do with people not understanding what Viagogo actually is (place where they match up resellers with buyers) and that since they are buying third party if something happens with the event (it gets cancelled, etc.,) that information will go to the original purchaser.
Apparently all soccer tickets have the names and other identifying information on them with respect to the purchaser that can be checked versus a photo id at the event. Our tickets have the name, birthdate, and country printed on them. Sometimes there have been problems with these not matching when tickets have been purchased through Viagogo. We did not have this issue.
Dates, times, locations, etc. can be changed. If purchasing through Viagogo, you run this risk more than if buying from the venue direct (via Listicket in this case) because those tickets will be sold at a later date when the accurate information is available.
The reseller may not follow through with Viagogo. If this happens, Viagogo will try to supply you similar tickets but if none can be provided, they will refund your money. I read several documented cases where this happened and the refund was done in a timely manner. I also read cases where the substituted tickets were not considered to be at the same "level" by the purchaser. Again a risk you will be assuming.
Finally, the biggest frustration for me with Viagogo, is that there is absolutely no way to communicate with them (email, social media, phone) more than 72 hours prior to the date of the event. They "say" that you can email them and they will respond within 24 hours but the link does not exist.
CONCLUSION: Would I buy from Viagogo again? Yes, provided we have no problems with the etickets at the event, but you need to be very aware of the risks that you are assuming (we were) and realize that if a question arises (as it did with us regarding the post purchase request for passport/national id photocopy) you will not be able to contact them until 72 hours before your event.
