Roma President James Pallotta bitterly criticised Coach Luciano Spalletti and his directors. “We didn’t make the right choices on who to keep and who not to keep.”

The Boston-based businessman is expected to be in Italy this weekend to go over the situation with Spalletti and his staff.

He was clearly furious about the performance in the Europa League Round of 16, where the Giallorossi were 2-1 up at half-time and ended up losing 4-2 to Olympique Lyonnais.

Roma President James Pallotta bitterly criticised Coach Luciano Spalletti and his directors. “We didn’t make the right choices on who to keep and who not to keep.”

The Boston-based businessman is expected to be in Italy this weekend to go over the situation with Spalletti and his staff.

He was clearly furious about the performance in the Europa League Round of 16, where the Giallorossi were 2-1 up at half-time and ended up losing 4-2 to Olympique Lyonnais.

“The frustrating thing was I thought we were playing pretty well, had chances, but then we just ran out of gas,” the patron told SiriusXM FC.

“We’ve got a number of players who are playing a lot of times, some because of injuries and some because last summer we didn’t make the right choices on who to keep and who not to keep.

“I tend to like some of the young players that we have, we either loan them out or don’t keep them, and we have to change that policy. We will change that policy.

“We have a lot of talented players that other teams are enjoying the benefits of and could give breaks to some of our players. You could see it with five minutes left, Kevin Strootman and a couple of others were almost walking back. That’s not their attitude, because Kevin’s a warrior, they just couldn’t do it.

“I started yelling at the screen and said I know they’re gonna score the fourth goal. A minute and a half later, with a similar play, they did score.

“Some of the players are playing a lot of times. Let’s take Federico Fazio, who was playing great and in the last three times he’s suffered a little. In the previous three years he didn’t get much playing time, but now he has thousands of hours in and I think he’s a little tired.

“I can see there is some tiredness in them.”

Pallotta also had very stern words for Spalletti after the 2-1 home defeat to Napoli in Serie A, as a change to four at the back was a surprise that back-fired.

“In the Napoli game I think we might’ve outsmarted ourselves. I said I didn’t have a good feeling about this one, I didn’t like the line-up and then we bring on Mohamed Salah with 35 minutes left and had about eight chances, hit the post a few times and he just opened the game up a lot.

“I thought maybe we should’ve had that, you know, earlier, with him starting. I’m second-guessing here, but I think even Luciano admitted after the game that in the Napoli game we should’ve had a tie or better.

“Against Lyon we looked like we were running out of gas.”

Pallotta also spoke about financial changes at Roma, specifically with their kit sponsorships.

“We gotta get things going better with Nike, frankly, to be honest. Not thrilled with our deal with Nike at all.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Tickets Kit Collector