He has played in Romania, Turkey, Italy and Israel, winning trophies along the way and experiencing football in very different environments. By the time he arrived at Ascoli, he had already accumulated more than a decade of professional football and a wealth of experiences that stretched far beyond the path he might once have expected as a Roma youngster.
It was at Ascoli that he came across Paolo Zanetti, then a young coach beginning to establish himself after his work with Südtirol. Zanetti had been a midfielder himself, and Petrucci found they naturally had plenty to discuss.
"The coach was Paolo Zanetti, and he was young," Petrucci tells Football Presse. "He's still young, but at that time he was even younger. We had a good relationship. He was a midfielder before he became a coach, so I had a lot of talks with him about the position.
"He tried to make me understand the game better and tried to make me improve. He gave me a lot of tips and good advice, and I could feel that he was going to be a great manager one day."
Petrucci was not simply impressed by Zanetti's knowledge of midfield. He noticed how the coach approached the whole game and the amount of detail he put into his work.
"He's a good coach. He likes to play football and he's very involved on the pitch. He makes you try many things. He's attentive to everything — set pieces, the opponents — and he prepares the game very well.
"He has a lot of qualities. He's a good person and he can motivate. I'm happy with what he's doing. I think he's doing great, but I'm sure he can do even more."
Zanetti's career subsequently took him from Ascoli to Venezia, where he won promotion to Serie A, before spells with Empoli and Hellas Verona. Petrucci's prediction that his former coach could reach the top level therefore came from watching him at a much earlier stage of his managerial career.
"I could feel that he was going to be a great manager one day. He showed in the years afterwards that he was capable of being a coach in the first division, and I feel he can go to top clubs with the years."
Petrucci's own route had been considerably less straightforward.
His football education began in Rome, and playing for Roma carried a significance that was difficult to explain to someone who had not grown up there. He left Italy as a teenager for Manchester United, but the attachment to his boyhood club never disappeared.
"To play for Roma is something incredible. It's difficult to explain. It's the passion that they have for this club, the people. It's great.
"When you feel part of the club, your attachment is so close. When you go to the stadium, the atmosphere is amazing, unbelievable. Everybody sings, everybody is close to the club."
There is an important distinction in Petrucci's description of Roma. The emotional relationship between the club and its supporters is not dependent on success.
"Even if Roma is a great club, it has never been top, top, top. For the fans, this doesn't matter. They support it as if it's the best club in the world, always. And for us, it's the best club in the world.
"If you are lucky enough to be born in Rome and support Roma, when you go to the stadium it's something you are really proud of. It's unbelievable."
That is what Petrucci believes makes the experience of watching Roma different from simply attending a football match.
"I think everybody who loves football should experience going to the Roma stadium once and seeing the supporters singing like they do all the time, with the flags, with everything. It's wow. Unbelievable."
There is an interesting symmetry in Petrucci's career. He grew up with the enormous emotional pull of Roma, then left his home city as a teenager to pursue a completely different football education at Manchester United. From there, his career became increasingly international.
There were other offers and other possible routes, but Petrucci has no interest in looking back and rewriting the decisions he made.
"When I was younger, I always had other offers and other opportunities. Some of them were good, important decisions to take. But at the time, whatever decision I made felt like it was the right one for me.
"So I don't want to look back and say, 'I should have done this, I should have done that.' Whatever I decided at that time was the best thing for me."
That philosophy makes sense when looking at the career Petrucci eventually built.
Manchester United gave him the experience of being developed inside one of football's biggest institutions. Romania gave him regular first-team football and silverware. Turkey gave him three years of a completely different football culture. He returned to Italy with Ascoli and Cosenza, then played in Israel before coming back to Italy again with Brindisi and Messina.
It was never a conventional route, but Petrucci sees no reason to judge it against the career he might have had.
"Because what I made at that time was the best thing for me. So for me, it remains the best thing."
The same willingness to judge people on what they were rather than what they later became can be seen in his assessment of Zanetti. When Petrucci worked with him at Ascoli, Zanetti was not yet the coach who would win promotion to Serie A with Venezia or manage at Empoli and Verona.
He was simply a young former midfielder trying to make his way in management.
Petrucci had already seen enough.
"I feel he can push more. I feel he can go to top clubs with the years."
Petrucci's own career may have taken him away from the obvious path, but he has never treated that as something to regret. And perhaps that is why his recollection of Roma is so powerful: leaving the club did not mean leaving behind what it meant to him.
The teenager who left Rome for Manchester eventually became a footballer shaped by several countries and several different football cultures.
But the club he grew up supporting remained, in his words, the best club in the world.
And the young coach he encountered much later in his career? Petrucci had already seen where he might be heading.