Former Roma director of sport Gianluca Petrachi said he was ‘abandoned by detached club owners’ and had asked to remove people ‘leaking or even inventing stories.’

The director was sacked following a blazing telephone row with then-President James Pallotta, who has since sold the club to Dan Friedkin.

He lasted barely a year at the Stadio Olimpico after he was poached from Torino, where he’d worked for over a decade.

Former Roma director of sport Gianluca Petrachi said he was ‘abandoned by detached club owners’ and had asked to remove people ‘leaking or even inventing stories.’

The director was sacked following a blazing telephone row with then-President James Pallotta, who has since sold the club to Dan Friedkin.

He lasted barely a year at the Stadio Olimpico after he was poached from Torino, where he’d worked for over a decade.

“I tried to erect a wall to shield the squad, but found myself alone battling against everyone else,” wrote Petrachi in an open letter to news agency Ansa.

“I was abandoned by club owners who were too detached from Roma, from Rome and its fans. I was left totally alone in this fight.”

The director also made some startling accusations about what caused the tension behind the scenes.

“I had asked Pallotta to remove certain elements who were leaking stories from inside the locker room and the training pitch or, even worse, who were actively damaging the relationships within the group.

“An example was when they literally invented an argument between Edin Dzeko and I. Those same elements were meant to show loyalty to the Roma cause, respecting the sacred code of the locker room, but instead decided to leak the experiment of a three-man defence performed by Paulo Fonseca, or Lorenzo Pellegrini’s injury.”

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